Sneakeater

Somebody has to say something about their Fabulous New Summer Menu. Last night, I had a Lemon Thyme Daquiri (what it sounds like), a Lil Jig (tequila, yellow chartreuse, Thai basil, other stuff), and a [swedish name] Fizz (aquavit, coriander, egg white, other stuff). They were all fantastic. The Lemon Thyme Daquiri was dangerous, cuz it's the kind of thing you could drink like seven of and not realize what you've done. The star, though, was the Lil Jig. I wouldn't necessarily think of chartreuse with tequila. But the chartreuse and the basil gave it a unique and highly pleasing flavor. It just kind of lit up my mouth.

FWIW, I find I eat MUCH less when I'm exercising regularly.

I guess we consider them ethnic.

I submit to you that this dish sounds worse than it tastes. ← But . . . but . . . it sounds GREAT!!!!!

Right! Although at least when I went to their GCT location, they only had ice cream, no custard.

I've been eating there pretty much monthly since they opened last year. For the first few months, reservations were doled out in the typical JGV manner: either very early or very late, but not during conventional dinner hours (since I almost always eat there late, this wasn't a problem). The restaurant was never crowded when I arrived there, however; clearly, tables had been held back from the general reservations pool. A few months after opening, there was a change: if you called up and asked for a reservation, they were available pretty much at all times. No more of that automatic "I can seat you at 5:30 or at 10".

There's one on Fifth Avenue, across the street from the Empire State Building. There's another one on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, somewhere toward Queens from Nostrand Ave. I'm sure there are more.

It's not exactly what you're talking about, but don't forget the concretes at Shake Shack. There also used to be an excellent soft-serve place on Eighth Street (I forget the name). But of course it was too good to last. I think the market here just doesn't understand soft serve.

In a funny way, I think Perry Street may be one of the most underrated restaurants in New York. It certainly is here. (Of course, in a way, places like this shoot themselves in the foot by making it so hard to get a reservation when they first open and are in their "trying to create a buzz" phase. I think that, especially for an essentially mid-level [well, upper-mid-level, but you know what I mean -- not fancy], non-sceney place like this, a lot of the people who would be in their target clientele just stop bothering. And aren't advised when the "trying to create a buzz" phase is over, so they can eat there without undue trouble.)

Not to name any names, but Country.

(Of course, Perry Street's wine list is so small that this isn't really a consideration here.)

I used to not care. Now I feel the same as bethala. (It especially is helpful to be able to think in advance about the wine selection, as opposed to leafing through this tome for the first time when you're handed it and having to come up with something within a couple of minutes.)

http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/give_i...an_niemietz.htm

That's not a boycott. That's just being a discriminating consumer within your own parameters.

That's for sure.

I think the "apparently" modifies the statement of the reason for the closing, not the statement of the closing.

And if the homemade absinthe was infused rather than distilled, please note the following tasting note from Sam Kinsey:

Thing is, I'm not sure there's a "recipe" for absinthe any more than there's a "recipe" for vermouth. Every maker has his own proprietary blend. And of course, the quality of ingredients can vary wildly. And (I have no idea about this) it might be that distilling (or whatever you do to make absinthe) really takes some practice before you get it right. I'm just saying that I'm not sure I'd judge this drink on the basis of a home attempt.

Thanks for the recommendations. I'll definitely follow them. Soon.

The Ted Breaux Nouvelle Orleans isn't that incredibly bitter. There really might be some art to this.

Don't you think you should have a lot of smallish items suitable for throwing at the TV?

You probably get all upset when people mention Thelonius Monk and Mozart in the same paragraph, too.

Thinking about it some more, I think we see two different things happening here. First, there's Joe Ng, a traditional dim sum chef, being permitted to ply his craft with a quality of ingredients you don't see in Brooklyn dim sum parlors. This seems to be a total success. Second, there's Tyson Ophaso, who, although he's "ethnically correct", is not an experienced Chinese chef but rather a trained European chef, who is being invited to cook basic Cantonese and Chinese-American dishes, but with superior ingredients and technique. This is the part of the concept that, at least so far for some of us, seems not to be working. And, when you think about it, why should it? If Ophaso, with his prestigious Troisgros training, were being encouraged to elaborate on the dishes -- to create stuff on his own -- that might be interesting. If Ophaso were an experienced and masterful Chinese chef being given access to superior ingredients (like Ng), that might be highly gratifying. But instead, he's a chef who's inexperienced in this type of cuisine, being limited to what appears at least so far to be a fairly pedestrian set of recipes, with the hope that his superior cooking technique and the superior ingredients will "elevate" the food. I think that for this to work they will have to either let Ophaso have his head -- develop new recipes (or variations on traditional recipes) based on his non-Chinese background -- or else make the menu more interesting by introducing more "new" Chinese recipes (e.g., more stuff like using whatever is "the 'in' spice in Beijing right now"). Otherwise, I think they're sort of working at cross-purposes with themselves on the "main" menu. Cuz when you think about it, it's hard to see the logic of hiring a non-Chinese or Chinese-trained chef (I mean, I know he's 75% Chinese, but he's not Chinese raised and trained) to cook traditionalist Chinese and Chinese-American food, without innovation. (I admit that this is extrapolating a lot from the ONE DISH I've so far eaten from the "main" menu. But Rachel P.'s and others' comments seem to support it.)

I think that's the way this place is gonna play out (at least for people like us who know what they're doing). But I don't think it's what they intended. They wouldn't have hired someone so fancy to do the "main" menu if it were merely an afterthought. PS -- I sat at the bar. Rampant mixing going on.

Chinatown Brasserie is almost the opposite of a place like Landmarc. I recently commented that Landmarc is completely uninteresting to think about, but is a very good place to eat. Chinatown Brasserie, in contrast, offers a lot to think about -- but the food, on one visit, although perfectly good, wasn't that interesting. Looking through the promotional material posted in this thread, I can see three ideas behind CB: 1. Let's do this kind of ethnic food that's traditionally done in New York in cheap restaurants, but this place will give gifted chefs access to very good ingredients and sophisticated kitchen equipment and staff. 2. This is going to be Chinese food, but it's a take on Chinese food by a credentialed chef who, while he's 75% Chinese, is Thai-born and French-trained. 3. This is a very big restaurant, so in order to keep it filled we're not going to serve anything too esoteric. I have a lot of interest in No. 1. I've always wondered, for example, what would happen if the magician in the kitchen at Tulcinga del Valle on 10th Ave. got access to quality protiens to go with her celestial moles, instead of the chewy, stringy stuff she's now bound to use. And at least with respect to the dim sum menu, that's just what's going on here. They hired Joe Ng, a dim sum master from one of Brooklyn's Chinatowns, and gave him access to absolutely top-quality ingredients and a kitchen that doesn't stint. The results are wonderful (although at least at this early stage of this restaurant, the dim sum menu is much too limited: you miss that joy of endless discovery that's such a big part of the dim sum experience). At least based on a sample of one (the beef in black pepper sauce), the main dishes, prepared by Chef Tyson Ophaso (late of La Cote Basque, among other highly respectable places), for me don't take off in the same way. Maybe it's because the meats they use at New York Noodletown are shockingly good for the prices they charge there, but (unlike the dim sum) this just didn't seem that much better to me than the Chinatown Cantonese standard. And -- admitting as I must my techinical ingorance -- I didn't see this dish being "elevated" by incorporation of European techniques unfamiliar to Chinese cookery. It just seemed like an admittedly very clean rendition of the kind of Cantonese cooking we're used to. Which brings us to No. 2 above. At least on the menu as it now stands (I understand it's a work in progress), I don't see much of it. As indicated above, the CB main-course menu looked like a lot of familiar dishes, well-prepared by not unprecedentedly so. I've had reservations about 66, but at least at this early stage of CB's development I think CB is less interesting than 66. And I think, perhaps, it's at least partitally attributable to No. 3. I think the relative failure (at least as I hear it) of 66 -- as well as the tremendous size difference (CB is a VERY BIG RESTAURANT) -- may have caused CB's moving forces to hedge their bets somewhat. But I wonder whether, in the end, that might turn out to be counterproductive. CB isn't extremely expensive, but it's so much pricier than a typical Chinese place that I think patrons might ultimately decide they deserve more than they're now getting. (I want to make it clear that I think their prices are entirely fair, considering the quality of the ingredients, the service, and the room.) Sure, there's the cocktail list, and the cool interior design, and the VERY COOL downstairs lounge (where I see myself spending some time this summer). But if the food is going to be a mere appendage of all that, then you don't need Tyson Ophaso. And if the food is going to be more than a mere appendage of that, I think it needs to develop more from where it now is. Believe it or not, despite all that, I fully enjoyed my meal here, and I fully intend to return. But if the food concept for the main dishes doesn't change a bit (the dim sum are beyond praise), I don't see myself becoming a long-term regular.