Fat Guy

Yeah Shanghai Deluxe and New Green Bo are more in the cheap-eats category, and I'm a huge fan, but I wasn't really thinking of that category. I was thinking more along the lines of Our Place Shanghai Tea Garden. Joe's Shanghai and Evergreen Shanghai draw a lot of mixed reviews, but I've had some outstanding meals at both. Liberty View is worth checking out. I bet, given what I know of your preferences from reading your posts forever, that you'd be into M Shanghai Bistro & Den in Williamsburg. I'm sure the Shanghainese food in Shanghai is better than in New York, but is the Shanghainese food in Canada better? Would I be satisfied with one great French restaurant? Not from an intellectual standpoint. But from a happiness standpoint, sure. And if the best French restaurant in North America happened to be in Houston while all other French restaurants in Houston were terrible, and Denver had five French restaurants that were not as good as the one in Houston but very good, I'd say Houston had the best French food.

Two examples from the P*ong menu that seem to me they're probably cooked: "braised duck, kabocha squash tapioca, chocolate, raisin, oyster mushroom" "kabocha squash coconut soup, tonka bean, cinnamon, crushed walnut amaretti" The others are of course dessert restaurants. But I'd call them NP dessert restaurants. I think that comes out more clearly if you compare them to a traditional cake-pie-pastry dessert cafe. So I don't know that they're disqualified by serving only dessert. Anyway, where else are you supposed to get dessert after Noodle Bar or if Momo-Ssam happens to be in one of its mercurial phases where there's no dessert?

I'd characterize several of the NP places as being without borders. I mean, a restaurant like Graffiti has an Indian chef who worked mostly in pastry at places like Jean Georges and Aix, and his menu is crazy-eclectic. There are a few Indian-ish items but there's also feta and watermelon salad with mint sorbet and pomegranate syrup, and there's foie gras raspberry crostini. You go to Momo-Ssam and some of the dishes have the Korean inflection that you were expecting while others are classic Western technique all the way. Bouley Upstairs has a sushi bar.

P*ong probably goes on the list -- I say that with some hesitation because I've seen the menu but haven't made it in yet. Degustation is still an arguable inclusion, even though I don't love the place. And I think the Kitchen Counter at Beacon gets noted as well, because it's an NP island within an OP restaurant. R4D will be back, assuredly. We probably should have included Chikalicious all along too, as a very early example. There was also an interesting NP alert in the most recent issue of Food Arts. It was a discussion of two LA restaurants titled "Small is the New Big." This piece comes at the NP issue (not explicitly so, but I interpret it that way) from a kitchen-mechanics angle (remember, it's an industry magazine). Eric Greenspan, who has worked for Ducasse and Bouley, has a little place in LA now called The Foundry. Definitely worth reading the whole piece, but here's a core quote: Food Arts also talked to Jason Travi of Fraiche, who had a cute line:

Let's set forth a few categories of food experiences here to help with the analysis: 1. Restaurants in Northern New Jersey that are better than any comparable restaurant in New York City. The example I gave of Moksha, above, fits I think into this category. Assuming I'm right about Moksha (others may disagree, but let's assume I'm either right or that there are a few other restaurants in other categories that meet the criteria), that means you can't get an analogous experience in New York City. To me, if you're an eG-level extreme gourmet, you might see that as a hole in your experience that needs plugging. And it's not a hole like "I haven't been to Cambodia." It's a hole like "I haven't spent a Saturday checking out Edison." 2. Restaurants in Northern New Jersey that are comparable quality-wise to New York City restaurants but offer a variant that is not available in New York City or that is superior to the New York city equivalent. A good example here would be White Manna in Hackensack. There are a lot of good burgers in New York City, and a few good ones in the "sliders" category. But there's no restaurant in New York City quite like White Manna. Wonderful little sliders made from hand-formed patties served on miniature Martin's potato rolls, in the coolest old mini-diner building you ever did see. Here's the whole eG Forums topic on White Manna. Another good example here is the myriad of hot-dog places in Northern New Jersey -- I hope John will come along to comment on that. For people who are passionate about a given type of restaurant, I think places in this category should be classified as must-visits. 3. Places in Northern New Jersey that are as good as places in New York City, and do not necessarily offer unique experiences, but are among the small handful of best places in their categories. There are a bunch of Chinese, Korean, etc., places that fit this description. These are for the collectors: the people who really want to have a handle on the Korean food scene in our area, or the Chinese food scene. Because one's knowledge of those food scenes is incomplete without at least some exposure to the Northern New Jersey highlights. Needless to say, knowledge is always incomplete -- nobody has been to every restaurant -- but Northern New Jersey has very significant Asian communities. 4. Neighborhood-based Northern New Jersey experiences that can't be matched in New York City. Newark's Ironbound neighborhood is one, Edison is another. Again, for those who are interested in culinary-cultural neighborhood exploration, places like the Ironbound and Edison are as essential as Astoria and Flushing. 5. BYO. One of the great pleasures of dining in Northern New Jersey is that so many restaurants are BYO. So many of my meals in New Jersey have been enhanced by being able to bring a variety of interesting beers, wines and spirits to have with dinner. Of course you need a designated driver. 6. Shopping. New Jersey ethnic food shopping is great. Once you get out there, the Super H-Mart, the Mitsuwa Marketplace, the Foodmart International and a few other places are great fun to visit. You can probably go around New York City and cobble together most of the same stuff, but the experience is inimitable. Many times, I've made a day of combining shopping (both food and non-food) with eating in New Jersey. If you hit multiple spots then the drive there and back isn't a big deal.

That is the comparison, exactly.

Which means about 25% do. And that's just in Manhattan. For the other boroughs it's a majority of households that do have cars.

Mitch, let me give you an example of something you simply can't get in New York City: a top-notch South Indian dining experience. You'll find a handful of good Indian restaurants in the city, but no excellent ones specializing in the cuisines of South India. I'm not talking about diner-level dosa joints. I mean full-on South Indian dining. For that, you have to make a field trip to Edison, New Jersey. Oak Tree Road in Edison is a sight to behold. It's one Indian store and restaurant after another. It makes Jackson Heights look white. Moksha, owned by the Mehtani Restaurant Group, which I've been following for the past couple of years as part of the research for my book and for a feature in Food Arts (they've hosted me multiple times at all of their restaurants in Edison and Morristown), is simply awesome. It's a whole world of Indian flavors that just don't get picked up in the standard Moghul-influenced North Indian places that dominate the Indian food scene outside of India. South Indian cuisine is more tropical, and you can see a lot of the flavor parallels to Southeast Asian food. People who hail from, for example, Bangalore, come from a lot farther away than Manhattan to eat at Moksha. They come from all over the Northeast or Middle Atlantic. I think you would really enjoy the lunch buffet. It's relatively inexpensive -- and I don't mean to imply that the restaurant is anything but elegant and serious; it just so happens the buffet is a deal. You can do it on the weekend when the traffic is gentle (it's also walkable -- though kind of a hike -- from the NJ Transit train station), and you get to try a ton of different, interesting main dishes, soups, breads, condiments (definitely pay attention to the condiments), etc. Right downstairs in the same shopping center is the best Indian dessert shop I've ever been to, owned by the same company. It's called Mithaas. "Starbucks meets Bollywood" is the theme, and the level of pastry accomplishment is a cut above anything I've seen in New York. Moksha 1655-200 Oak Tree Road Edison, NJ 732.947.3010 http://www.moksharestaurants.com/ Mithaas 1655 - 170 Oak Tree Road Edison, NJ 732.947.3014 http://www.mithaas.net/ All the information about all the Mehtani Restaurant Group places: http://mehtanirestaurantgroup.com/

We walked in and were seated immediately at 8:30pm on a Tuesday, but we were lucky: if we had arrived 10 minutes later we'd have had a 45 minute wait. I would definitely suggest making reservations if you can, but there's no certainly no harm in attempting a walk-in -- especially if you go early.

Folks, I promise I did not rehearse this with Nathan and Kathryn. They spontaneously and independently chose to prove my thesis better than I ever could have.

Motor vehicle registrations in Manhattan (from DMV): 246,956 Total number of hourseholds in Manhattan (from US Census): 785,127 I hope at this point nobody thinks the "we have no cars!" excuse is a straw man! New Yorkers are so wedded to the idea that they don't have cars, they somehow manage to overlook that when you walk down any street in Manhattan you walk past car after car after car, garage after garage after garage -- in residential neighborhoods. Those cars are owned by people. Not that you need a car to get to New Jersey. The problem is lack of motivation and knowledge, not lack of cars. That's what we're going to fix here. It ends today!

Car ownership/leasing in Manhattan itself is about 25% of households (I've seen estimates ranging from 20-30%). So yes, Manhattanites specifically need three friends in order to help their odds of having access to a car, or one friend who lives in any of the other boroughs.

To those of you who mostly read along in the New Jersey forum and don't necessarily check out the New York forum every day, I wanted to direct your attention to this topic. I'm hoping you'll help put together an essential guide to the best of the best in New Jersey, targeted at New Yorkers unfamiliar with the culinary riches of our neighbor to the west. Your thoughts, posted there, would be much appreciated. Thanks.

I've come a long way I've gone 500 miles today I've come a long way And never even left L.A. -Michelle Shocked Foodies in Los Angeles think nothing of driving all over their massive metropolitan area for a good meal. Yet foodies in New York City rarely venture to nearby restaurants in Northern New Jersey -- many of which are significantly closer to Manhattan than Totonno's or Nathan's. Whenever I challenge New York foodies on this issue, they start making excuses: New Yorkers don't have cars, there's no good public transportation in New Jersey, and anyway there aren't any good restaurants there. Let's examine those claims, which are accurate non-straw-man restatements of what I've heard dozens of times from real people. New Yorkers do have cars. Two million of them. There are a few different ways to crunch the numbers, but as a rough guideline about 60% of New York City residents live in a household with a car. Which means if you have no car but one friend then you probably have access to a car. That's not to mention all the undocumented cars that people register elsewhere to save on insurance (for many years after college I had a Vermont car). And the Zipcars, etc. No, it's not that New Yorkers don't have access to cars. It's that they don't use cars to seek out excellent food. In other words, they're lazy. There is public transportation to and in New Jersey. It's possible to get to many, many food destinations in New Jersey in a single hop from either Port Authority or Penn Station. Two-hop trips are also available for a lot of the destinations that aren't right on top of a rail or express-bus hub. Others might require a taxi on the last leg. It's really no big deal. In many cases the departures are so frequent that you don't even need to worry about schedules. In some cases you do. Either way, in order to make it work out you just have to be a little bit motivated -- say, one third as motivated as you need to be to drive anywhere in LA at any time other than 3:30am. And anybody who is not dining out in New Jersey is, plain and simple, missing out on many of the better restaurants in the New York metro area. In case you've been living under a rock -- as most lazy New York foodies have been for the past couple of decades -- New Jersey is now the place to be for many kinds of Asian food (including Indian), and that's just the beginning. There's excellent pizza, burgers, hot dogs, deli (both Jewish and Italian) -- indeed all the categories of food that New York calls its own -- plus a few worthy "fine dining" options. And then there's food shopping, at a much grander scale than what New York City can offer. I submit that anybody who hasn't done at least a highlights tour of New Jersey Indian, Chinese and hot dogs, plus Japanese and Korean food-shopping, lacks a fundamental element of cultural literacy about food in the New York metro area. I thought perhaps I'd call upon some of our frequent contributors from the New Jersey forum to help us out with a little project: a cultural literacy tour of Northern New Jersey food destinations tailored to the lazy New York foodie. Please don't post a long list of restaurants without comment. What we're going to need here is precise leadership: full information about the restaurant or other destination (not just its name), an impassioned explanation of why it's worth going there even if you live in New York City, instructions how to get there by public transportation from New York if that's possible, and of course a link to the relevant New Jersey forum topic if there is one. The best of the best: just the one or two places in each category that absolutely must be visited. Let me start with the easiest recommendation: Mitsuwa Marketplace, in Edgewater, NJ. Mitsuwa is the premier Japanese food market in the New York metro area. If you've only been to the Japanese markets in Manhattan, you won't believe your eyes when you see Mitsuwa. It's huge. It has everything. The quality is excellent. You'll see some references to a dip in quality a few years ago when Hanahreum (H-Mart) started pulling away a bunch of Mitsuwa's business, but Mitsuwa today is vital and excellent. Mitsuwa also houses a food court offering some worthy, accurate Japanese cheap eats. So you can go there to shop, and you can grab a bite before heading back. If you look out over the Hudson River from anywhere on the Upper West Side, you can see Mitsuwa, or at least the pier right next to it. There is frequent shuttle bus service (22 buses a day on weekends, 11 on weekdays) from Port Authority run by Mitsuwa -- here's the information -- and it costs $2. New Jersey forum topic on Mitsuwa. Mitsuwa Marketplace 595 River Road Edgewater, NJ 07020 201.941.9113 Open 365 days a year, from 9:30am to 8pm (9pm on Saturdays). The food court and specialty plaza have slightly shorter hours. It's all online at: http://www.mitsuwanj.com/en/

Peter Hoffman, the chef-guru of Savoy fame, recently opened a casual spot in Alphabet City called Back Forty. The restaurant is hosting press dinners this week, so I decided to check it out. Back Forty serves simple, ingredient-driven food. A couple of the dishes I tried hit high notes, others didn't. Based on this visit, I'd say it's an impressive neighborhood restaurant but perhaps not one worth taking the L train for. The space is attractive -- it's got a farm motif but it's not overdone. The interior is divided into three rooms (in part because the restaurant spans two buildings) and there's also an outdoor area that's still under construction and will open in the spring. Here are a few photos of the rooms, which I was able to take because the restaurant had zero customers at 6:30pm. However, when we left at 8pm nearly every seat was full and there was a bar crowd to boot. The place definitely runs on an East Village timetable. Rustic table setting and BIG cocktails: The single best dish of the night was the cranberry bean salad with radicchio, shaved fennel and spice-crusted feta cheese. This was an astounding dish, from the "from the garden" section of the menu (which is where the action is) -- basically a selection of side dishes that can double as appetizers. The cubes of feta are rolled in spices -- cumin and coriander are evident -- and they're the sort of thing you'd stuff yourself silly with if given the chance. The dish comes together beautifully and makes a strong argument for simple, farm-fresh food made with the highest quality ingredients. If only the rest of the dishes lived up to the standard set by the cranberry bean salad, Back Forty would be a destination restaurant. The other dish you see in this photo, green wheat (like bulgur) with mint and yogurt sauce, unfortunately tasted like health food from the 1970s -- overly salty health food. Roasted oyster mushrooms with shallots were pretty good -- not a revelation -- but the French fries sprinkled with rosemary salt were a bit limp, too thin for my tastes and I really don't see what rosemary salt brings to the table. The entree section of the menu is called "the core" and includes rotisserie chicken, a burger made from grass-fed beef, a BLT, pork sausages, a crab roll (New England lobster-roll style) and a whole grilled trout. Simple food that can be delicious when done well. We ordered the burger and half a chicken. I was prepared for a chicken revelation, because I'd heard that Back Forty gets excellent chickens and spit-roasts them with great skill. Maybe it's a deficiency of my palate, but the chicken tasted ordinary to me. The seasoning was nice but the skin didn't crisp up the way great chicken demands. Maybe the dish works better in the whole-chicken format (those who recommended it to me had it whole). I don't know. The burger was quite good. Solidly in league with the better burgers in town. Excellent beef flavor, cooked as ordered, superb bun, house-made ketchup provided in a squeeze bottle. Here's a cross section: We had two cocktails, one of which, the Back Forty (basically a whiskey sour), was excellent, and the other of which, the Grapefruit Julep, was unbalanced. Also available are a number of interesting beers, and wines including house-label wines from Long Island. The apple pie was well made, the brownie was dry and the freshly made doughnut (they come three to an order but we just asked for one to try) is going to be a huge seller -- it's great. Back Forty 190 Avenue B (near 12th Street) 212.388.1990 http://www.backfortynyc.com/

Okay, so some background: Graffiti is the minuscule, highly personal, genius restaurant of Jehangir Mehta, who has worked at Jean Georges, Union Pacific, Virot, Compass, Aix, and Sapa. His background is primarily as a pastry chef, though from the food at Graffiti you'd never guess he wasn't the chef de cuisine at all those restaurants. It's astounding what a high level of cuisine they're able to produce from a nothing kitchen, with a staff (front and back combined) of three. He's Indian, but the food isn't Indian. It isn't really anything, though various Asian influences are evident in most (not all) dishes. The reason the service is so charming is that Mehta himself does most of the order-taking and customer interaction. It took me awhile to figure this out, because at first it didn't occur to me that the chef could be the headwaiter and I didn't know what Mehta looked like (I think I shook his hand once at some event way back when, but maybe not). Once I put two and two together, though, it made sense. Mehta is basically the executive chef by day, designing the dishes and handling the business side, and the maitre d' and half the waitstaff by night. Mehta's partner works the tiny kitchen single-handedly, and there's one server who assists Mehta on the floor. We were swept away not only by the food but by the whole experience. You can't believe how small Graffiti is until you get in there. It makes Momofuku Ssam Bar look like Tavern on the Green. It makes Upstairs at Bouley look like the mess hall on an aircraft carrier. There are four tables! Three tables for four, and one table for six. If you're a party of two, you'll share space. The room is narrow and, as you'll see from the photos, dimly lit. There are Indian art objects on the walls, and the tables are set with those funky Hog Wild Zoo chopsticks. As soon as you walk in you're in the care of Mehta, who is warm, hospitable and eager to please, though not at all obsequious. The pace is relaxed. It takes awhile to get seated, awhile to order, the food comes plate by plate, it takes awhile to get your bill and to have it processed. You've got to get into the spirit of the place -- this restaurant probably couldn't exist outside New York but it's not New York, it's a tiny nation under Mehta, where they don't experience stress or wear watches. We started with a salad of fresh watermelon, cubes of feta cheese, mint sorbet and pomegranate syrup. As soon as we saw the plate and tasted the pure flavors, we knew we were at a very high level of restaurant. (Again, the restaurant is dimly lit, and the intimacy of the place made flash inappropriate, so these photos were the best I could do.) Next, chili-pork dumplings with grapefruit confit, topped with crispy semolina. Like the watermelon-feta dish, this was a study in contrasts, and the best dumpling dish I've had in ages. Surprisingly spicy, a little bit rustic at heart but evidencing advanced technique. Crabmeat noodle rolls with onion confit went in the opposite direction from the dumplings: subtle, delicate, along the lines of miniature streamlined summer rolls based on crabmeat. Slices of lightly seared scallops topped with pickled ginger. The line of red is red chili jam. Served with slices of fresh-baked flatbread. This dish was over the top: foie gras-raspberry crostini with walnut salad. Enough said. Ironically (given Mehta's background), the one dish that wasn't impressive was one of the desserts: halva with mascarpone-date cream. Just didn't work. The other dessert, however, was extraordinary: a steamed bun stuffed with chocolate, served with peanut-butter ice cream. There are two cocktails that are, bizarrely, listed on the regular menu right with the $7 small-plate appetizer-type dishes. (The menu is actually divided by price: $7 dishes, $12 dishes, $15 dishes, and $6 dishes -- the first three categories are roughly in progressive order of size and heft, and the last category is dessert). We tried both and they were very enjoyable -- sweet but complex. The Prosecco lychee Martini came together nicely, but the real standout was the pineapple grape tarragon peach tequila muddle. You get a little bowl of chopped pineapple and red grapes topped with fresh tarragon, and you're supposed to eat the fruit and take sips of the frozen peach-tequila cocktail. Prices are very reasonable. We had seven plates of food (five savory plates, two desserts) and two substantial cocktails. $81 (before tax and tip). I can't recommend Graffiti highly enough. It's a treasure. As Nathan says: go. The restaurant does double duty as an off-the-charts sophisticated place for kids' birthday parties and other sweets-oriented events. Mehta will also do similar events in people's homes. The primary target audience for that side of the business is kids 4 to 14. Graffiti 224 East 10th Street (between First and Second Avenues) 212.677.0695 http://www.graffitinyc.com/

I think there are a lot of variables there, which is why my first instinct is to look at best v. best. Ultimately I only need one good restaurant in a category to be happy. It's also difficult to do with Chinese because when you get to the top level there's no such thing as "a Chinese restaurant" -- there are all these different regional cuisines. New York, for example, has quite a lot of depth in Shanghainese whereas Vancouver has it all over everyone else on the Hong Kong-style mega seafood places. For Vietnamese -- indeed for all Southeast Asian -- New York is pretty shallow, though.

I can't believe you made me go to my notes. Of the three outer-borough Vietnamese places I tried awhile back my favorite was a place called Pho Hoai at 1906 Avenue U in Brooklyn, right near Ocean Ave. In Elmhurst there's a place called Pho Bang, 8290 Broadway, where I had excellent pho but didn't sample much else. I also had a surprisingly good meal (I say surprisingly because several people claimed it was going to be an ordinary place but I thought the food was exceptional) at a place in Flushing called, simply, Pho, 3802 Prince Street.

Has this ever happened to you: You fill out the comment card that comes with the bill at a restaurant. Maybe you write some mildly negative things. Before you make it out the door, a manager has read the comment card and he or she cuts you off at the pass to discuss the matter. This has happened to me three times in the past couple of years. I'm pretty thick skinned, so I don't mind having the discussion, but it seems to me this is sort of a bait and switch. Comment cards are supposed to offer an opportunity for arms length criticism or praise. I think it's poor form to confront the customer right then and there, especially since this might out the customer as a complainer in front of the other people at the table. A phone-call would be more appropriate.

Well there's back and forth now.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

I don't think Scorpio should give up on private dining. I'm telling you, the "Back" of the Boardroom at Becco. It seats up to 28 and is quite nice. I've recommended Becco for lots of events over the years, including a couple of large extended-family dinners that I got roped into helping to plan, and it has always been highly satisfactory in the requested price range. Even the serious foodies in attendance are usually surprised by what a nice job Becco does. Private dining room lunches are popular. Breakfasts too. Pharmaceutical companies, sales meetings, trade associations, commodities boards . . . all these types of operations book a lot of private dining during the day and invite clients, press, etc. If you're in the wine-and-spirits press you get a lot of these sorts of invitations. Depending on the restaurant, the number of turns at lunch varies a lot -- there are certainly restaurants that do 2 or 3 turns on busy weekdays -- but, educated guess, at nice places the citywide lunch average is probably 1.5 turns and the dinner average 2.5.

Restaurant Girl filed a scathing review of Bobo today. A couple of gems:

Mitch, in my experience private dining is usually (not always, but in the majority of restaurants where I've looked into it) more expensive per person than a restaurant's standard menu. I think this is primarily because a private room is bought out for an entire sitting, whereas in the regular dining room you can do two or three turns. In addition, private dining is a major profit center for restaurants that do it. The old adage about how restaurants make their profit at the bar could be applied equally to private dining.

Becco.