Augieland

Taste of the Nation New York '06

I went to Taste of the Nation last night with every intention of being a good little food blogger and grabbing shots of the dishes NY's big chefs make when their food needs to be convenient to eat as you walk through a crowded room. I thought it might even be fun to snap pics of our local guys who have achieved celebrity, like Tom Colicchio. But instead I walked in, grabbed a bourbon peach cocktail from the Employees Only boys and a short rib tortellini with Parmesan foam from Shea at Cru, and just got swept up in the fun of the event.

 

Telling you what was best would be hard. The food was kind of like an I-Pod on shuffle: you know that everything in the place is something you want to be there, and at some point would be perfect, but in a certain mood you just find yourself hitting the advance button. So instead I will just offer some awards.

 

Single piece of food that did the most to establish a new restaurant's presence with authority: the steam ship round by Craftsteak

 

Best piece of foie gras ever eaten with my fingers: the strawberry rhubarb terrine by Alain Ducasse

 

Best slider: Sturgeon slider with caviar by Petrossian

 

Best pink thing: the beet and gorgonzola dolce ravioli in poppy seeds and Tuscan butter by

Abboccato

 

Other best pink thing: the blush drink by Eben Freeman

 

Best preparation of a garnish: Employees Only's Dusan spanking the mint for their bourbon and peach drink

 

Best pocket chocolate: Sweet Riot 65% cocoa covered cacao nibs

 

Silliest thing in the gift Bag: the OXO potato masher (I mean if you support hunger by indulging in fine finger food can't we assume you either own a ricer or don't mash in the first place?)

 

Best "this is what we do" plate: a tie between.…

The poached Halibut with spring pea, morel and rhubarb from Gramercy Tavern

The mussels, rye berries, and ramps from Savoy

 

Best item in the silent auction: the 9 ½ inch golden statuette of a rooster

 

Best "put that on if you like it hot" condiment: the sauce for the tacos at Dos Caminos

 

Best example of the difference between the front of the house and the back: Kevin from Gramercy Tavern and Eben Freeman the molecular mixologist formerly of WD-50 still hospitably making cocktails more than an hour after the event had wound down.

 

Great cause, great food, lively fun crowd. The only thing I would do differently is bring a dessert-eater. There were many offerings and they looked awesome, but I am never going to try one over something like shrimp with manchego rice, chorizo oil, and basil oil from Ureña.

 

Dassa Bassa: 763 chargedillian stars

Dassa Bassa came highly recommended as a restaurant to visit while in Madrid, which made us regret waiting to book it until the day we landed since we learned that they were fully booked for that, our only free evening of the trip. As a next option we asked our concierge to book us a late table for our last night, assuming a nice meal would be welcome after the drive from San Sebastian to Madrid. Then away we drove, planning to hit Dassa Bassa at 11 PM the night before we flew home.

Darrio Barrio, the chef/owner of Dassa Bassa, is a good-looking, poised, fit young man. I know, because when we arrived an hour early for our reservation to find that we were not in the book he came bounding up the twelve or so stairs that lead to the restaurant. Two things brought Darrio from his subterranean kitchen and dining room: he was terribly concerned someone may have been being caused grief by his restaurant, and his is the best English in the place.

After a discussion in which he explained that the restaurant only does one seating a night per table and that he was sorry for any inconvenience, he went on to assure us that they would get us in but would need some time because there was no change-over to slide us into. We explained we weren't expecting to sit until eleven, understood that things happen, and really couldn't swear to having a firm reservation since we had trusted someone else to make it, so we would be happy to wait, take a walk, or come back next time we were in Madrid. All in all, we sat at the four-seat stainless steel and glass bar that comprises the ground level entrance to the restaurant for about forty minutes, and descended the same stairs Darrio had scaled to make sure we were ok twenty minutes ahead of our lost reservation.

Once at the bottom of the stairs we entered a many chambered, vaulted ceilinged, white-washed brick cellar that obviously predated both steel girders and the modern cuisine. Once we were seated deep in this strangely bright and airy catacomb, the chef made one more visit to make sure we were happy and we informed him that we would be having his tasting menu paired with the Moet and Chandon pink champagne (one of the two tasting options offered).

Menu Moet & Chandon Rose at Dassa Bassa

Filo-pizza
A long, thin strip of phylo with a hard, aged cheese crisped on one side of it and a red powder down the center of the other.  The whole thing tasted of those little black bits near the crust on a slice pie.

This was served with garlicky cracked green olives with their stone inside.

Capuchino de sopa de cebolla con espuma de queso idazábal
A beef-based onion soup complete with crouton, topped with a foam of the basque cheese idazábal. A rich soup loaded with caramelized onions, leavened by the lightness of foam rather than a tired old gratin.

Esférico dry martini
A sphere of gin floating in tonic water. So really it was a gin and tonic, but a very cool way to consume one nonetheless.

Espárrago verde y blanco en ensalada con yogur al cominoy aceite curry
Thinly shaved white and green asparagus woven to form a nest around greens that had toasted, chopped cashew nuts tossed through. Set on top of this was a bread crisp studded with Iberian ham, and accompanying were cubes of mint gelatin, yogurt and curry oil.  The curry oil was a nice trick. Although the new cuisine knows no boundaries as far as ingredients go, seldom does a dish commit to tasting outside the norms accepted by Haute Cuisine. With its play between the strongly Indian curry flavors of the oil and the tempering effect of the yogurt and nuts, it was great for its confidence, boldness and harmony.

Langostino con agridulce de naranja y ensalada de grotes
Steamed shrimp in an orange sweet-and-sour soup, topped with a crisp speckled with powdered nori, and accompanied by a sprout and herb salad that included a chiffonade of basil. All together it tasted somewhere between Thai sweet-and-sour shrimp and Chinese egg noodles in duck sauce, with the benefit of the contrast of the slightly bitter sprouts. It had all the good flavors of well made American Chinese food without any of the oil/cornstarch heaviness.

Chipirones en su tinta con arroz suflado
My rudimentary food Spanish translates this into something like inky rice with baby squid. What was served was seared hake with powdered nori, a ball of bok choi, and scallions, with a bonito broth poured over it tableside. I am not sure if the surprise of our visit caused the substitution or not but either way we were happy for it. The broth was very aroma-driven, the nori contributed its vegetal bitterness, and the fish was rather straightforward.  Wound into the bok choi ball, though, were the flavors of ginger, soy, mirin, and miso so the more you opened it the more the broth assumed these flavors and the more complex the dish became.

Cochinillo confitado con salsa de mile y romero
A boned suckling pig saddle, warm cabbage slaw studded with Iberian ham, and a fried nest of potato strands. All this was in a honey sauce with a snowy pile of maldon sea salt on the pork. The sauce was nowhere near as sweet as the name sounds and, if it threatened, the crunchy pyramids of salt and a green chili, tomato and herb salsa tamed it well. The potatoes were thin and crisp and the cabbage had a substantial bite. Both served as counterpoints to show just how tender the pig was.

Granizado de té lima-japonesa son espuma de gin fizz
I have to love a chef who works gin into two out of nine courses. Similar flavors that amused us lead us into dessert. A concoction of Japanese green tea, lime ice and a gin fizz foam, it reminded me that I don't drink gin fizzes because of their sweetness. I totally understand the choice as a bridge to dessert, especially in light of the gin-and-tonic amuse. Sadly, in its execution it was a little saccharinely sweet for my palate.

Remolacha efervescente, cremoso de mango y helado de leche merengada
A soup of beet root poached in red wine with orange, cinnamon and lemon zest accompanied by cinnamon, lemon zest, and mango cream and topped with a beet root/caramel crisp. The beet soup was lightened by a gingery effervescance, as if hit with a last minute touch of Jamaican ginger beer.

Golosinas
Sesame brittle and Bailey's marshmallows made for the most accommodating petit fours yet. 

Dassa Bassa's drinks list is amazing; they have five kinds of natural water and five kinds of sparkling water, they have dessert wines, imported wines, all of Spain broken down by its sections and D.O.s, aparetivos and more. Not overwhelmingly large, it has depth in every section. But since the menu was paired to a wine, and very well so I might add, that's the way we happily went.

I went to Dassa Bassa because I was told Darrio was one of the new guys at the forefront of La Cucina Nuevo and indeed I think he is. Take into account the lengths he went to accommodate an American couple he had never met, seen, heard of, or even had an inkling to believe was telling the truth about a supposed reservation.

While sitting in the bar I picked up a current issue of Food & Wine Magazine someone had left and found Dassa Bassa listed as one of the "must go" Madrid places, on their list of 365 international restaurants. When I congratulated the chef he had no idea what I was talking about, and when I showed him he proudly displayed it to the couple of tables with folks that were obviously friends, after bringing it into the kitchen.

Like most practitioners of the modern cuisine, Darrio has a great touch and vision of how to play with the tools current cooking technology affords him. In his execution, Darrio seems to prefer reinterpreting to decomposing. Rather than remake a dish in an entirely new way by putting different versions of base parts through a technology blender and wowing, he seems to be looking abroad for inspiration and creating Spanish versions of the dishes. The pork saddle was definitely born of German preparations, the asparagus Indian, and the shrimp Chinese, but rather than trying to make German, Indian, Chinese, or even British (if you count the gin) dishes with ingredients from those cultures that aren't available at their best in Spain, he is working Spanish ingredients and techniques into them.

It is worth mentioning that our dinner was about 60% cheaper than all the other places we went in Spain while being of comparable quality, so it comes in as a super value. On one experience, I can decidedly claim that Dassa Bassa has a young, energetic, creative, humble chef offering inspired international cuisine at a very fair cost, who takes making people happy as his primary aim. So I guess you can say I strongly recommend it. 

Savory NY

Sitting with Regular at the bar of Cru one warm afternoon on an early April Monday, learning all about the Jurancon region of southern France, I noticed a young woman leaving the dining room with a video camera. It was way too early for service and I asked Patrick (greatest bartender alive) as I am apt, "what the heck is that all about?" Patrick said something like, "hey, lady with the video camera, this is the town drunk, and he wants to know what you are doing" (really, greatest ever, and helpful too).

She explained that she and her husband were starting a website about NYC restaurants and that a significant part of it would be videos about the restaurants. Having seen many video logs (or vlogs) about food that look as if they have been shot on a cell-phone, with really exciting tidbits from vacuous would-be q-list Paris Hiltons talking about what a hot spot the bar at such and such is, I didn't expect much. But they were interviewing a chef who commands a lot of my respect, so I asked to be sent a link when the vlog was up, wished her luck, and thought little more of it.

Then, when I returned from Spain I found an email in my inbox with a link to Savory New York and found myself very impressed by the site. Rather than being a place that tries to play both sides of the line between info and opinion, it sticks very safely to the info side even better for the fact that someone who actually understands the workings of a restaurant has organized the info, focusing on what is interesting beyond those questions that can be answered by a handy current Yellow Pages.

Set up in the "wiki" format, it answers basic questions on cuisine price point, credit cards, size, date opened, and appropriate style of dress. It goes on to answer some of the other questions you may have regarding chef de cuisine, designer, and accolades a place has received. Honestly, as a resource I think it is very easy to use and hope that they can get many more of NYC's places listed in the near future although, to be fair, by the time I first got there they had about 300 listed and I would guess about 40% of those contained a video and I believe it was their first week so I would say up and jogging at a good pace.

The videos are why I am writing this, actually. Besides being well shot, edited and of a good, digestible length, they speak to a philosophy I appreciate and support, they star chefs. I find it hard to take a place seriously that is not chef-driven. When I love or hate a place it is the chef I credit. If it is your food and you feel the behavior of the front of the house is another person's worry I find it hard to believe you will last long. I seldom love restaurateur-created places. On Savory New York the videos for each restaurant involve the chef of that restaurant discussing his or her place as a simple matter of fact. What better person can a foodie go to for insights into whether or not we will like their place (ahem, of course other than a well-reasoned blog by a guy or gal who loves food, wine, restaurants, chefs and has spent the time developing a body of work you can reference to see how your opinion jibes with his/hers)?

Don't have the time or energy to read the ranting of some food-obsessed geek before having a meal? Or want a little objective insight into a place? I suggest a visit to Savorynewyork.com.

Cookshop Saturday afternoon

Went over to Cookshop for some brunch yesterday, and had two pretty awesome dishes, here's the porn:

Roasted chicken breast with toasted almonds, green olives, and golden raisins salad

Potato pancake, salt cod brandade, two poached eggs, Meyer lemon sabayon, and mizuna, (Wife's vote for best breakfast dish ever)

Craftsteak night 2, the porn

Stopped by Craftsteak for a second time Thursday with Pichon , Helmet, Stupid, and Rubble. Here is some of the porn:

Oyster amuse

Appetizers:


Tartar

Whole roasted foie presented

Foie served

Rhubarb with foie

Steaks:
in order of preference

Hawaiian grass fed rib eye

Ridgefield corn-fed Hereford 35 day

Corn-fed Hereford porterhouse for two

Snake River Farm waygu rib-eye

Ridgefield corn-fed Hereford 28 day

Ridgefield corn-fed Hereford 42 day

Sides:
in order of preference

asparagus

Mixed mushrooms

Zucchini flowers

English peas

Yukon gold puree

Roasted ramps

Morels (most buttery thing ever)

Sauteed spinach

All

None

Day three in Craftsteak's history and some things have been added. The foie is awesome, if you own a '21 d'Yquem (yea you) this is the dish to get. Soon the 54 day aged beef will be around and I may just have to go back.

this wine is 1893er than any other i've had

When we opened it it tasted like Riesling, surprisingly like Riesling for something 117 years old. A little muted, but definitely Riesling. Spicy, with caramel notes, it was good; not the best Riesling I'd ever had but definitely far more whole than I had expected.

Our common experience with very old wine told us that it would not last long out of the bottle so we began to drink, not in a rush but definitely not as slowly as it turned out we should have. It probably took about ½ an hour for the six of us, Pichon, Ringwald, Helmet, Mispooz, Wife and I to finish the 750 ml bottle. And the truth is, as Pichon and I looked at each other across the last wee ounces, we realized rather than die a fast death it had opened. The caramels were now brulee, the spices were now anise and cinnamon, there were tropical fruit notes.

No wines last longer than those with residual sugar and good acidity. This was however an Auslese, so at the beginnings of the scale as far as these components go. Basically, if I ever have the chance to drink another 117 year old German white again I may decant it and then start, knowing I may need to shift gears in the middle to finish in 20 minutes or delay over 2 hours. As for old reds, I'm still going to consider it a pressure situation.

We chose this wine looking for a unique experience, and that we had. To be honest, in the end the juice was far better than I thought it would be which was a very pleasant surprise. If you have the chance definitely go for it, but take your sweet time.

Can Fabes: 264 rolexilian stars

It's about a half-hour drive north from Barcelona to Sant Celoni, but it is a move from one of Europe's most metropolitan cities to one of its familiar, charming, small ones. A recognizable city plan; houses, shops, and domiciles that butt right up against narrow streets, built to consolidate advancing forces, then group them in squares with high sides easy to take advantage from. Upon entering these little hamlets you realize they have planned to have the upper hand on tourists for far longer than there have been cars, tires for cars, companies to make tires for cars, or books to guide people between the couple of these bergs where a hometown boy has set up a restaurant significant enough to merit taking a break from wearing down your tires just long enough to have a meal.

The boy from Sant Celoni is Santi Santamari and his restaurant is Can Fabes. Attached to a hotel, it is Europe's smallest Relais & Chateaux and the first Catalonian restaurant to receive three rosettes from Michelin. That's right, at the same time Ferran was taking the helm at El Bulli Santi was setting up a small fine dining outpost in a small town that would take all the accolades the French have to offer.

The last sign before getting off highway C-33 lets you know that France is a little less than 120km away. However sitting in Can Fabes, you could have traveled far past that border. That is not to say that the food is French -- the ingredients and flavors are decidedly rooted in Catalonia. The technique, however, emphatically is. Santi has taken the classic French belief that there is no such thing as too luxuriant to new levels at his little place in the north.

It is a sedate room, almost a study in negative space, entirely done in flat black. There are translucent ochre accents throughout it -- in the water glasses, the partition around the staircase to the tasting room/wine cellar, and the dividing wall to the open kitchen. It approaches almost a Spanish Zen in its ability to be a room for fine dining yet not really by affect so much as by tasteful little touches like the small, individual, representational sculptures that adorn each table where flowers might have been.

The Chef’s Menu was a surprise, and the list at the end was only available in Spanish. For wine, not knowing what the food would be, I deferred to the sommelier who brought me a Fino for an aperitif. Next was the house white made of chardonnay under a private label from a one-hectare plot they have in the Pendes. With notes of ginger and clove, it was wonderfully spicy yet subdued enough for the food. A glass of 150 Barrels Red, by Gamez-Alba followed. A blend of temprenillo and merlot ironically not as woody as the name would suggest, it was juicy, fruity and again good food wine with enough flavor to stand up, but not so much that the food was pushed down.

There was only a Spanish language copy of the menu available, the bold italics are excerpted from it.

Menú Santi Santamaria

Amuses
Octopus (pressed and coated in a gelatin reminiscent of bacon), mackerel (raw, with a piece of fish liver set on top), almond cream (sandwiched in buttered, toasted phyllo), baby pig belly (slow roasted with a sweet and sour sauce), mini-octopus (wrapped in phyllo and seared), onion confit and lardo (a piece of apple base topped with onion confit and toasted sesame, wrapped in lardo). A terrific thing happens when a guy from the tapas culture takes on an amuse. Many small and variant things take you in divergent directions, prepping you for just about anything.

Cabra de mar con crema de hierbas
Rice-pasta wrap enveloping crab and sweet onion on a pool of herb cream and olive oil. The filling was very deeply flavored of the sea with the onions and crab playing sweet notes. I assume that the crab's (or a lobster or langoustine's for that matter) tamale was used to flavor it. The best part about seafood on the Mediterranean is how the cuisine plays up the fact that the sea is a "fishy" thing and makes no apologies for that. This seafood tastes briny and deep while obviously fresh, even in this lighter dish.

Ensalada de angulas con aceite de guindilla y ajo
Baby eels with cream of soft garlic. A fried parsley leaf and toasted garlic chip were set on a loose pile of baby eels bound with a wilted scallion green. There was roasted garlic cream on the plate and tiny chopped chives were interspersed throughout the eels. I have to learn more about the seasons of the Mediterranean; if these little guys are a spring thing, spring is the time to come. Their chew is not unlike perfectly al dente semolina pasta and their taste is of sea water.

Colminillas y espárragos con foie-gras
Wild asparagus, cultivated asparagus, and white asparagus, all steamed, and served with seared foie gras, morels, butter and sea salt. This was the Frenchest of dishes. As if it weren't rich enough, any chance asparagus tips had at bringing a little chlorophyll bitterness to the dish was handily beaten back with butter. Lest you think this is a bad thing, this dish tasted of foie, butter, sea salt, asparagus, and roasted morels, and what it lacked in highs and lows it made up for in decadent richness.

Pulpitos con Macedonia de verduras, tocino y botifarra
Baby octopus, zucchini, carrots, braised bacon, fingerling potatoes and black sausage. Throughout Spain you will find flavors of the sea and the land being combined in dishes. Their common ground seems to be levels of salt. Rich sausage, seared pig belly, and baby octopus all share a salinity that, if not necessarily made for each other, can be easily brought together as Santi does here with that best friend of salt, fresh butter.

Langosta con habas y guisantes
Langosta and baby favas with pig ears, pig mouth and seared fennel. Sliced, seared hearts of fennel rested under an enormous bisected langoustine so perfectly sliced that you had exactly half of the liver and the rest of the tamale intact. Over this, a ragu of pigs ears and other facial parts cooked with butter lent a soft richness to the dish. Toasted pine nuts, baby favas, and spring peas added a fresh sweetness and yet another layer of texture to the already fleshy bite of the langosta and the pliable chew of the pig.

Sant Pedro con alcachofas

John Dory with artichokes and chives. I am learning that the great chefs of Spain use chives like some American chefs use parsley. I would say it appeared in three out of every four dishes, chopped very finely as a garnish. Otherwise, this was a pretty straight-forward seared skin-on piece of a fish fillet on braised baby artichokes, sauced with what seemed to be the sauté pan remnants with some of the artichoke braising liquid monte au beurre.

Pato de sangre con escalonias y su jugo

Roast strangled duck with roasted vegetables. A beautifully roasted duck was presented whole and carved tableside, then served with roasted white asparagus, pearl onions and apricot. Rare and all the more gamey for having been strangled to preserve the blood in the meat rather than let it bleed out, there were large crystals of grey salt on the crunchy skin. Anything more would have distracted. Brillat Severin said it best: "any one can learn to cook, you must be born to roast."

Formatges
For the cheese service, a fromagiere showed up with an eight-foot black cheese cart with about twenty cheeses on it. They were described as mild or pungent, by region, and by their constituent milks. We faithfully put ourselves in the fromagiere's hands to make us a good mix favoring Spain but not at the cost of anything genius. We each ended up with four cheeses different from each other's, presented from delicate to strongest. On my plate, in the role of strongest was a mixed sheep and cow's milk blue that was dark yellow in color and described as "similar to cabrales." Once we had eaten the other seven we dug in with the sherry our waiter had given us and had another of those better-than-the-sum-of-its-parts food and wine moments. Sweet with salty, bracingly astringent with comfortingly sweet, pungent farm valley with sun drenched mountain top raisins. Perfect.

Ralladura de moras
Strawberry granita with fruit marmalade, apples, whipped marscapone, pear, and applesauce. This was a perfect follow-up for the cheeses, lush with the beauty of the fresh whipped cream, light with the flavors of ripe strawberries, better for the contrast the applesauce layer being warm added, with all this goodness sitting atop soft cubes of ripe pear. I find the best deserts are the simple ones, playing with natural sweetness, exactly like this.

Buñuelos de chocolate

Coconut ice cream with chocolate-stuffed doughnut holes. Five beautiful blonde orbs fresh from the fryer, filled completely with molten dark chocolate. The coconut ice cream accompanying these dark chocolate nuggets was served atop chopped hazelnuts, because sometimes you feel like a...

Petits Fours
Anise-flavored marshmallow, key lime pie with a very buttery crust, chocolate spearmint truffle, almond pound cake with raspberry, white chocolate curry truffle, mince pie, and chocolate almond torte 

Having only eaten one of the chocolate-filled munchkins, I explained the need to taste each petit four in case one was a gem (they were all great) but I truly felt terrible when a small glass with whipped cream and toffee sauce showed up and I couldn't help finishing it. Heck, it tasted like a Werther's without requiring all that bothersome masticating.

A robust man with one of the most pleased visages I have seen, Santi seemed most happy when he showed up halfway through the meal to ask if everything was ok. I am suspicious he has never heard anything less than very good. The truth is, Santi's cuisine is like a beautiful gold watch. It may not be exactly your style, but there is beauty in a classic gold watch you can't help but appreciate for its excellence of style, precision and opulence. If you are a classicist that sees beauty in such things, you should go see what happens in the hands of this gifted Spanish artisan. If you are a devout acolyte of the new school who only appreciates such things as timeless, but for another time, this is still a level worth checking out.

Craftsteak: 552 dashfedillian stars

I love Tom Colicchio, and probably always will. Tom and his restaurant Gramercy Tavern were both very pivotal in my transmutation from a guy who loved food and wine, to a guy who may think about food and wine a little too much. "Think Like a Chef" was the first cookbook I ever read cover to cover like a novel, and while I was doing it I would lunch at Gramercy, allowing me to get a real feel for what I would be doing at home later on.

Tom also commands my adoration because he has done a good deal to draw attention to the better quality of food from local green markets. Tom is an ardent advocate that the best way to elevate the quality of your food is to elevate the quality of your ingredients. Rather than preaching about local, small grown product being karmically better for the next generation and us in every way (which seems obvious, yet few seem to care) he has simply made the case that, in their season, all foods taste better so why even try to eat them out of season.

I do not love Craft, and that is probably Tom's fault. Although all the food I have ever had at Craft has been truly exceptional, the idea makes little sense to me. The truth is, thanks in a large part to Tom, I am a pretty good cook now. I consider meal preparation a great way to pass time, searching out great ingredients and taking the time to properly roast, braise, or whatever them. I know for a vast group of people this is not true but, since it is for me, when I go to a restaurant I go to see what imaginative new things the chef is doing or pairing, looking for that inspiration rather than obliging them to simply be better at cooking than I. So a restaurant whose mission is "we will cook it perfectly, you decide how to put it together," just isn't my idea of fun. I go to a restaurant to completely put myself in the chef's hands.

Last night Craft Steak opened to the public, so again I found myself eating from the hands of Chef Colicchio. It is in that part of town I used to call Chelsea but now call No-Such-Thing since restaurants publicists like to call it No-Meat (although at this point it may be Juggernautonia) on the Del Posto side of 10th Avenue at 15th street. I really appreciated the design; it is just a very cool, very big room. What I am sure would be called banquettes are really more moon-shaped couches with a great line. Separating the bar from the dining room is a glass wine hall. There are very sleek individual steel pipes with softened white cylindrical lights which are grouped to make chandeliers. Everything sleekly flows to a huge mural of the block you are on, painted from a bird's-eye view.

I feel at this point it is important to make a difference between a steak house (chop shop), and steak restaurant (meat-focused fare). Steak houses do one thing perfectly, and usually tend to do nothing else well (think Luger's watery, huge shrimp or crunchy tomatoes that taste like plastic till you pour a catsup-based sauce on them. Really. Catsup. On a tomato. Say that out loud and think about it). A steak restaurant is more like a seafood restaurant. They make various dishes in various preparations of a similar origin. Waiters in a steak house do their job well when they keep you from making the huge mistake of ordering the non-house special; waiters in a steak restaurant help you choose wine and are aware that there are at least four more preparations for spinach than creamed.

The staff looked great in their first-night crisp peppermint-striped shirts under black vests with ties. It is probably more a testament to our server's talent than anything else, but when I think back on the room I think of dimness though when I recall Allison she is well lit. Either she really was as enthusiastic to be up and running as she seemed, or the adroit design has taken focused area lighting to new levels.

Steak is the opportunity to drink Bordeaux, an opportunity I tend to like to take advantage of. My companion this eve was Fittsdoola. He and I had taken ownership of some '95 Pichon Baron earlier this year and we concur that it is a nice Claret and were therefore very happy to see it on the menu. We were a little upset to see it priced $180 in view of the fact that we picked up ours through very traditional retail methods for $60 a bottle in the last fiscal quarter, making this skewed to the very high side of what is a fair price. But, traditionally, steak houses are part of the reason wine is so overpriced, it was their first night, and we really wanted to drink it. So we bought it, but agreed that going forward we would look past that one for more appropriately-priced wines, or just drink drafts of Sweet Action, possibly the best named beer in a long time. The Baron drank very well, with raspberries dominating the standard Left Bank profile. Fittsdoola felt it was almost Rhone-ish in its cinnamon and earth notes, perfect with the ensuing meal.

No food service is more à la carte then steak, and therefore what is lost on me at Craft is genius at Craftsteak. A huge selection of raw bar items in various preparations, as well as meat selections that favor charcuterie, and eight cold vegetable preparations called salads, combine with lobster bisque to be your available starters. We decided to leave sampling these for later, in the interest of keeping things fresh, to concentrate on the restaurant's real focus: steaks.

Being an inaugural run, we had popped in assuming it would be hard to get a seat and planned a short sortie just to taste some food at the bar, so we focused our eating on the right two-thirds of Craftsteak's menu, the mains and sides. The steaks are all sourced, meaning you can choose from five origins. Within these parameters you can choose cuts in the case of the Corn-fed Black Angus beef, the Corn- fed Hereford beef, the Hawaiian Grass-fed Angus Beef, and the Snake River Farm Wagyu Beef, or length of aging in the case of the Ridgefield Farm Corn-fed Premium Hereford Beef. If you are with a curious epicure and someone to share with, as I was, this menu is a dream. At first we discussed getting one Ridgefield strip aged forty-two days and one aged fifty-four. We also discussed the Hereford porterhouse, before settling on the thirty-five day Ridgefield strip and the strip from Hawaii. We plan return next time for the aging vertical of Ridgefield; Craftsteak may thrive as a result of comparison eating.

The truth is feeding cows corn is one of the cruelest things we do to animals in order to make them more appealing to diners. (It is far worse than foie. While ducks would naturally eat grains to fatten their livers to some point, no cow would eat a non-green item. It is literally poison to them). But I don't base my distaste for it on that, that would be hypocritical. I disagree with general corn-feeding of cows because it so bad for their health that, when done on a large scale, they need to be heavily dosed with antibiotics to keep them alive, and that is not good for us, plus most corn feeding is done because it is cheap and easier with no direction of flavor in mind. Cutting corners in the food supply is never something I support. However, on a small-scale farm done well and carefully it truly can make better tasting food and that I like.

So here we were with an aged corn-fed strip steak and a grass-fed strip, cooked at the same time by the same guy, with which to compare the merits of one to the other. Because of this opportunity alone I will forever have a warm spot in my heart for Craftsteak. Both were served medium rare, sliced off the bone and then again sliced thinly across the grain in a hot dish with tarragon, chopped chives, and a roasted shallot as garnish. Both were also roasted as opposed to grilled, which I imagine will always keep Craftsteak a restaurant about meat rather than a respected steak place. Although the roasting plays more to subtle nuance of taste, the truly great steaks are grilled in my experience.

As far as appearance, the grass-fed is more lean and redder; the corn-fed aged is almost whiter than red taking on an almost blue cast. As far as texture, the Wustoff steak knives are so sharp we really couldn't judge until we were chewing. In the mouth, the corn-fed is far softer; the grass-fed is more resilient than tough. As far as flavor and aroma, the corn-fed is rich, you actually feel yourself eating it more than tasting it The grass-fed is far more flavorful. Eating it was like tasting wine (by the way, we both agreed that the wine was far better with the grass-fed; the corn fed would have wanted a monster, would maybe even justify a Cali cab), there was a point where the flavor was so mineraly and saline that we decided it was most comparable to a fish like cod. Truly fun to contemplate.

In the beginning, we agreed that we probably preferred the corn-fed to the grass. It was just so luxuriant. Later, we felt the grass was probably more preferable because the fun of the dinner was in the contemplation of sensations, which the grass-fed just offered more of an opportunity for. In the long run, there was some corn-fed left and no grass so we decided the proof was in the lack of pudding, and went Hawaiian.

To accompany this little experiment we had three sides:

Roasted Asparagus, aggressively salted and peppered with great black bits from roasting, it was dressed in olive oil and had great crunch. I enjoyed it as did Fittsdoola, who claims not to usually.

Fried Zucchini Blossoms, the flower was batter-dipped and the baby zucchini attached wasn't. Good bite, again well-salted and peppered. I may have preferred the vegetable to its petals, something that seldom happens when comparing battered and not.

Roasted Potato and Garlic Gratin, good ones are good, bad ones are bad. This is a good one.

Craftsteak seems to me poised to succeed where others have failed, as a steak restaurant in a town of steak houses. Those that compare it to great chop shops will probably be upset Craftsteak is a place for people that want to engage in dining not be steered through the motions. People that want to ponder while eating, not be fed. There is little doubt that great steak is a thing many people love and, as a rule, they love it simple. However this does not, mean that everyone wants a great, simple steak at the cost of a good room, good service, and good accompaniments. They just want the steak to be the most cared about component. On a cursory visit, I think this may be that place.

Ditch Plains: 921 opentoclozillian stars

We popped into Ditch Plains last night to try the fare. I’m not exactly sure New York needs another little fried seafood shack à la New England restaurant. There are a few dotted about town (the solipsistic all-about-me part of town, from around Houston to around 23rd street, around 1st Ave to around 10th) and most of them do a decent job. But the Landmarc crew owns this one and I love their work, so it seemed apropos to check it out.

My first reaction was to the décor. Not that I would call Pearl, Mary’s, Mermaid, BLT, or Black Pearl theme places, but they have all played up the stereotypical New England shore theme in their styling.  Ditch Plains feels like NYC; there is glass and steel, the lights are dimmed to tawny, the music is rock and set to the notch your cool uncle would dig but that would make your dad make you repeat things over. There is a cool bar big enough to support a wait but not of the size to support a scene. As far as flourish goes, there are a couple of anvils scattered around. I don’t know what they have to do with the Village, surfing or seafood, but who doesn’t get happy when they see an anvil?

The menu is printed on gray paper and presented in roughly eight strips, about six inches high and two inches wide, unified in their upper-left corners by a small, clasp binder ring. There are seldom more than about five items per page making this paint-chip set-up easy to look at things like which salad you want (served all day), which sandwich you will have (served all day), or how you would like your omelet (served all day) but it took me about four times through the cycle to remember enough of the things I saw on the way through to plan a meal. I don’t suspect this is a big deal, though, for two reasons: one, I could have unbound them and laid them next to each other, and two, Ditch Plains strikes me as the kind of place that if you like it you will love it and would become a regular in a short time if you were so inclined, so within a couple of visits you would have a pretty standard order. The wine list is set up in the same way as the menu. Clear, concise and well chosen for the food, it continues that most important Landmarc restaurant tradition of pricing that encourages one to enjoy wine as a contributing part of the meal rather than a luxury item.

As far as service goes, it was proficient and exceedingly fast. The restaurant’s biggest styling feat may be its beach bar-like staffing. Everyone I came in contact with was fairly good looking, young, and pretty relaxed, in t-shirts, bringing the separate parts of our order as they became ready, which in some cases was remarkably fast.

For food, I sampled four things:

Chicken liver mousse (served all day): a solid example. If you like chicken liver mousse you will like this one. It is presented in a ramekin, with a fat cap on top and grilled rounds of a Sullivan Street baguette. There was less toast than the thin applications we were putting on merited, causing some frustration to my fellow diners (Bubby, Downstairs, Sequana, and Babbopappa) when we ran out of bread with a little less than half the paté left. For me it was great because the dish came out cold and they all ate it so voraciously that, were it not for the wait for a little more toast, it would have disappeared before it shook its chill off and started tasting.

Lobster Roll (served all day): meets the requirements of a lobster roll; chunky lobster meat and something green, bound in a fat, on a grilled hot dog bun. In this permutation, the amount of meat is about that of a cull (a one claw lobster) as opposed to a full pound-and-a-quarter's worth of meat, but it sells for two thirds the price of its closest corrival at Pearl so the portion seems to make fair fiscal sense. The green thing is both celery and tarragon. Tarragon is a cruel mistress; depending on your tastes a light amount can coax the sweetness from the lobster meat, while too much overpowers it, making it what may as well be a cold licorice rice pudding. For me, with the chardonnay we were drinking, it was safely in the middle of these extremes but closing in on the heavy side. The fat was mayo, and the bun was a potato bun grilled over fire rather than on the flat top, the danger here being that the smallest scorch on the sweeter potato roll will overpower all the nuance of this dish.

Mac and cheese (served all day): served bubbling hot in a crock, it is solid, creamy, rich and tangy. I added salt, and Downstairs missed a bread crumb topping of some kind. It definitely plays on the lighter side of the mac and cheese world, I will have it as is on hangover mornings and add hot sauce next time I order in the evening.

Mixed greens salad (Served all day): a simple mix of red and green oak lettuces dressed with a shallot, sherry vinegar dressing, it may have been the best dish of the evening. It had a solid balance of flavors, just as simple and light as it should be.

My last thought on the first night of Ditch Plains is that it is comfortable. I am aware they did a soft open (I believe they did so with discounted checks during this period, which is a very smart practice in my opinion. If you aren’t up to your full potential why should we pay at its level?) but this place felt strangely untroubled for a first night. I believe they intend to serve food till 2am, which may make it a great place to go have a nice quiet late night something. Of course I’ll do my best to find out.

LaBroche: 734 bichromatillian stars

Walk past the concierge desk at the Hotel Occidental Miguel Angel in Madrid and make a left, then make your next left through the glass door, the one just past the shoe shine stand, and you will find yourself in La Broche, Sergei Arola's restaurant. Through this simple glass door you walk from the dark reds and polished wood of a classic old world hotel into the sleek white space of a modern fine dining restaurant.

There is something about a well-executed theme that makes you realize how thin the line is between a graceful aesthetic and disaster. La Broche has such a theme. Most things in the room are white and trapezoidal. There are sleek low white flat box-shaped furniture pieces dividing the dining room, the tables are squares draped in white linen, the chairs are white and square-backed and seated, even the windows are large white framed squares with flat, square, sheer, white, curtains. Besides flat white wood there is also some glass. The wine room is a large glass box around a rectangular column in which the wine is held.

What isn't a parrelelogram is a perfect flat circle -- the plates, two of the tables, even the flat white walls have small circles recessed in them in a rectangular pattern below knee level, as does the ceiling. It is truly captivating. If there was a single imbalance in the décor it was that, with the sun filling the flat white windows, the spotlights on the tables were turned up, creating a hot bright spot in the center of each table. This room lives at such a zenith level that you can notice things like this.

The only things not flat and white or glass in the room are the black-clad servers -- the gentlemen in suits and the ladies in pants and black leather waist jackets. The effect is somehow reminiscent of the matrix, if the matrix had been populated with an extraordinarily attentive and talented wait-staff as opposed to deadpan actors. The attentiveness of the servers is worth mentioning. I do not know what accolades La Broche has received from the local or international press (it was recommended by a friend) but I suspect it is close to but not at the top, creating a charming eagerness in the service unmatched by the comfortably-settled, awarded places I visited in the region. Try as I might, I could not empty a water glass. When Wife retired to the restroom, one server ushered her to the door back to the hotel lobby and opened it while another changed her linen. While never intrusive, not a single trick was missed or even delayed.

At some point after you pull your menu from the flat white box sitting on the table at your place, but before you order, the focus moves from aesthetic to food. Except for those moments between courses when you realize that the sculpture in a square recession in the wall is of the sacred heart, or you think “wow” that in spite of the language barrier you have a good comprehension of what you are being presented with and everything you could possibly need is provided, you concentration is absorbed with the exceptional food.

Before making a decision on the menu we were presented with a dish of impossibly thin bread crisps and three accoutrements for dipping: an aioli, salted tomatoes in their water and a very grassy olive oil, and guacamole.

Once we had committed to the Chef's Grand Tasting Menu, the bread service arrived. On a plate was a soft whole grain bread, dry white bread toasts, a pot of sweet cream butter, and three versions of a fine grain salt – pink pepper, coffee, and a Himalayan salt (white with pink specks). Part of this service included a choice of four olive oils. We went with the house olive oil (medium-bodied) and one noted as strong called Picual. I went through a step-by-step process, tasting the bread, then bread and lipid, then bread, lipid and salt. My favorite combination ended up being the strong Picual oil with the pink pepper salt.

Having opted to receive English language menus at the end of our meal we did not know what we would be eating so I asked the sommelier to provide glasses of wine. First was  white, a Sauvignon Blanc-Verdeho blend by Brada from Rueda. The second was red, a Granacha-Syrah from Ribera del Duero. Both were simple, with food friendly acids, and both were good at adding a component to the dishes' flavors without getting in the way. With dessert we had a Domaine Des Baumard, Coteaux du Layon that was wonderful.

Following in bold italics are the menus headings; in italics are the descriptions from the English menu.

Arola's Moment
Selection of classical tapas to start the menu following by our spirit Arola's concept

Tapas: cornmeal-dusted baby squid, fried and served with black (squid ink) aioli; potato confit, cylinders of new potato poached in olive oil with a depression in the top holding a little green garlic and a dollop of crème fraiche; creamed mushroom shot, hot mushroom soup topped with a froth of mushroom cream; and spicy baked cod brandade with toasted pine nuts and raisins.

To start...
Crepe rice filled with roes of sturgeon calyx caviar and an olive oil frosting
A sheet of rice-paper wrapped around sturgeon caviar to form a cannelloni with micro greens and the tiniest mirepoix I've ever seen – carrot, celery and chive (playing the role of onion) – on top. The frosting was olive oil which had been poured onto a negative degree fryer and scraped off, with its shavings collected in a Chinese soup spoon, then dusted over the top of the cannelloni tableside.

Radish from Loire coated with herring "gazpacho"
A canelle of bread ice cream was topped with thinly sliced radish and baby watercress, over which a pickled herring cream was poured tableside. A decomposition of the tastes of afternoon tea sandwiches, clever for touches like a smooth frozen ingredient being the bread, and the piquantness of pickled herring being softened by cream, with the work of tearing it taken out of the equation.

Roast beef and side order of sprouts & vegetables with hints of béarnaise sauce
Roast beef, beautifully rare and sliced inconceivably thin, on roasted baby vegetables with rosemary oil-fortified pan gravy and béarnaise air. These days it is very in vogue to be over foams, airs, and the like. To people who claim to be so, I offer this dish. All the flavors, sensations and reminiscence of a decadent roast beef dinner, yet light enough to fit in the middle of a lunch as a part of progression in tasting.

Sea Urchin with algae cream, boletus powdering and a mint pea sphere
A Mediterranean sea urchin, darker and far more intensely flavored than its Pacific brethren, sat in a pool of creamed nori with a shaved mushroom giving a fleshy bite to it. Set atop all this was a bright green puree of spring peas and mint contained in an alginate pill. All together it offered the taste of a sunny day sitting on a jetty at low tide, of drying seaweed, evaporating sea water on black rocks, and light green air blowing off the shore.

From the Sea and Mountain...
Homemade gnocchi with "Thassos" olives, red prawn & "Marcona" almonds soup
Black olive gnocchi in Marcona almond soup, with seared red shrimp and breadcrumbs. The black olive gnocchi felt like marzipan and the almond soup tasted somewhat like an un-sweet version of the treat. Then there was sort of a saffrony-paprika flavor to the shrimp that permeated the whole thing, keeping it safely savory and wholly Mediterranean.

Rock mullet with broad bean "Iberian" lasagna, peas and black pudding
Seared mullet filets on top of a mixture of peas, baby favas and diced blood sausage which had been made into an "Iberian" lasagna (with thin strips of the fat from cured Iberian pigs acting as the layered pasta sheets) accompanied by a pan sauce from the fish's cooking built with lobster stock. The strips of Iberian ham fat, about an inch and a half long and an eighth of an inch wide, all but melted from the dish’s heat. They added a fascinating body, tying together a dish that played with the lighter side of textures while combing flavors rooted in the land and pulled from the sea.

Veal sweetbread with asparagus and caper cream based on a Bernard Pacaud classic
Roasted veal sweetbread sauced with demi-glace on pared, poached baby asparagus tips with a champagne caper air bridging the gap between the sweet rich earthy flavors and the light green astringent ones.

Before the dessert...
Little plate of cheese with nuts compote & P.X. syrup
A cow's milk cheese from Mallorca with almond zest, a dot of reduced Pedro Ximenez, a nut compote, and a twist of black pepper

Sweet Cooking...
Coconut cloud, marscapone cheese, and toffee cream
Shaved, toasted coconut dusted on coconut foam enveloping marscapone cheese set atop toffee cream, with a tiny little dusting of powdered anise seed on the rim of the plate

"Mojito" kumquat
Kumquat custard thinned with lime oil and rum, topped with egg-white froth that had been touched with a torch flame, and a micro mint leaf.

Chocolate scented and chili pepper olive farmhouse bread based on a "chocolate with bread" concept
Two rectangular logs of chocolate mousse with notes of capsicum studded with chocolate-covered puffs and topped with tomato sorbet and a micro-cilantro leaf

petit-fours
corn-chip dust in a chocolate cone, violet-flavored marshmallow, chocolate with coffee cream and raspberry, strawberry cookie, orange jelly, chocolate with nut-cream filling, lemon crunch (as if the astronaut version of lemon sorbet),  white chocolate and black olive lollipop

There is no chef involved in fine dining today anywhere in the world who is not borrowing some techniques from the new school. The point at which a chef becomes a practitioner of the new cuisine, as opposed to one using the new technologies to round out and advance traditional cuisine, is to be found in the lightness of this meal. Very satisfying and pleasing to the palate, Arola's dishes presented challenging and successful reinterpretations of the expected. Rather than depending on traditional conveyances of flavor (fat), textures, temperatures and primacy are played with here providing a wonderful dining experience without being cripplingly heavy. The interest is more in stimulating your five senses, taste being primary, than in making you feel you got your money’s worth by stimulating the nerves in your belly that sense your belt.

Immediately after this meal I got in a car to drive six plus hours from Madrid to Barcelona. Rather than feeling weighted down and forced to recline and contemplate a meal of this length and range, I was stimulated and excited by it. I spent every second of the drive thinking about the components of each course, loving the bitter, the sweet, the salty, the rich, the tart, the light, the heavy, the presupposed and the realized, each presenting a new experience to be enjoyed. Even when the inspiration was a boring old roast beef with vegetables, gravy and béarnaise, in Arola’s hands it was creative, beautiful, textured and, of course what matters most, delicious to eat.