spanish | Notes on Food

Eats around town

March 21, 2016 § Leave a comment

Blue Ribbon Sushi at Hudson Eats at Brookfield Place

Favorite dishes – bombolotti all’Amatriciana (sauce of spicy tomato and guanciale) and roasted sunchokes with almonds and brown butter – at Maialino during a leisurely lunch while between jobs

Introducing Laura to Toro‘s grilled corn and bone marrow (look at those gorgeous colors!)

Sadelle‘s pick up (sesame bagel with smoked Scottish salmon, chive cream cheese, red onion, tomato, capers). I was obsessed with their bagels for a while but now the lines have gotten too long and I’m pretty sure they upped their prices.

Matcha latte at Chalait – gorgeously prepared but not sure I’ll be getting on the matcha trend train any time soon

Spaghetti alla vongole at Rafele Ristorante, my parents’ favorite restaurant whenever they come to visit (though we introduced them to OTTO the last time they were here so now they may have a new favorite Italian place)

Lovely Sunday brunch with Bohee at the beautiful Untitled at the Whitney

Booze-free dinner at Balthazar with Cindy (clearly not skimping on French fries though)

Delicious and super spicy spread at Pok Pok lunch (finally tried it after years of wanting to go) with Wes

More Sadelle’s – this time dining in with the full-on smoked fish tower and endless bagels (much better than just picking up)

Empellon Push Project

March 20, 2016 § Leave a comment

Photos from this winter’s Push Project (super behind on posting), an amazing and delicious collaboration between Albert Adria (of the now-closed El Bulli) and Paco Mendez of Hoja Santa in Barcelona and Alex Stupak of Empellon Cocina. It featured a great mix of Mexican and Spanish food, traditional and super-modern, and tons of booze (let’s just say we started and ended with shots of mezcal). Such a treat and afterwards, I made a note to add Stupak’s Kitchen Table at Empellon Cocina to my list of reservations to make.

Wellfleet blood clams (a little bit strange looking but delicious and briny) with frozen sangrita and the aforementioned mezcal shot. Woo!

Pickled vegetables, crunchy hoja santa (literally tasted like a crunchy, slightly sweet leaf), cantina olives (an El Bulli classic…spherified olives that exploded in our mouths) and corn jicara with pipicha oil and chipotle with a giant, refreshing saffron margarita

Smooth and silky avocado gazpacho with a whole bottle of Allende beer (we ended up having two each actually)

Black truffle quesadilla

Mini Pueblan-style sandwich with fried abalone (a tiny po’boy)

Mixed seafood cocktail with spicy ketchup

Red onion x-ni-pek

Papantla-style pipian with Maine lobster (yes, we each had half a lobster for this course – so pretty and so good) paired with a cider

Pork ribs in Grandma Flor’s adobo (one of the more traditional dishes, but also one of my favorites)

Mole with sweet potato and fruit with a red wine

Milk-soaked sponge cake with kabocha squash and pecan ice with…sherry? I can’t remember and honestly, at this point in the dinner, with all the different kinds of alcohol we’d already had, I was feeling pretty lit.

Corn, chocolate and cajeta (the perfect dessert…not too sweet)

Chicory flan with duck egg yolk and orange sorbet with sal de gusanos

Brunch at Tertulia

December 27, 2014 § Leave a comment

An impromptu brunch with Cindy at Seamus Mullen’s Tertulia on 6th Avenue in the West Village, one of my go-t0 casual spots in the city. Our conversation earlier that day (which resembles about 80% of our conversations period) basically went: “Have you eaten yet?” “No” “Brunch?” “Meet you at Tertulia at 1pm” “OK, yayyyy.”

Tertulia is known for its traditional and modern tapas, and the interior does make you feel like your inside a bar in Barcelona. I’d only ever visited for dinner and didn’t really know what to expect for brunch. As it turns out, our meal, though enormous and probably difficult to finish for two much larger-sized males, admittedly didn’t include your typical brunch fare, but it was perfect for someone like me who isn’t big on sweets. The nuestras patatas – crispy potatoes with pimenton and garlicky aioli – were spud crack. So addictive that I kept going back until the large pan was empty. I’m also always a sucker for fried shishito peppers (you’ll see that fried is a theme here, despite it being a veg-heavy meal), sprinkled with sea salt at the last second before serving. Although the tortilla espagnola (eggs, potato, onion and olive oil cooked in a small skillet) was delicious, it wasn’t as exciting as the other dishes.

Probably the best dish were our brussels sprouts (again, fried to crispy) with smoked sobresada, pork belly and sheep’s milk yogurt. I had this the first time I ever went to Tertulia a few years ago and went bonkers over it, but since then, I never saw it on the menu during subsequent visits and figured it was a seasonal item. Super savory, with fatty chunks of pork belly and a creamy yogurt dressing, it’s a dish I would order at the bar with some red wine on a solo visit (if I ever actually did that kind of thing).

Our last dish – a seasonal dish consisting of grilled broccoli, lamb bacon, olive oil fried egg and some peppers – though good, paled in comparison to the potatoes and the sprouts. The broccoli was a bit raw for my taste and the dish overall seemed a bit dry to me and could’ve used some kind of sauce or dressing. All in all, however, a really satisfying, fry-tastic not-really-brunch that reminded me why Tertulia is one of my favorite restaurants in New York City.

Dos Caminos and Tertulia (again)

May 28, 2012 § Leave a comment

It’s been a whirlwind first week at work (in only a very good way), and between all the firm lunches and receptions, I still managed to explore some restaurants in the Greenwich Village neighborhood.

First, YJC and I dined al fresco at Dos Caminos on W. Houston Street after she had a long day at work. We weren’t too hungry since it was pretty late, so we shared a huge bowl of guacamole, a trio of salsas ranging from mild to scorchingly hot, and freshly-fried tortilla chips and a side of crispy sweet potato fries (though I’m still partial to the ones at Maxie’s Supper Club in Ithaca).

Dining al fresco at Dos Caminos Soho

I also ordered the chicken taquitos – pulled chicken rolled in crispy corn tortillas with shaved lettuce, queso fresco, and a tomatillo-avocado sauce and YJC got the Mexican chopped salad with a heap of tasty things like grilled corn, poblano chiles, green olives, and toasted cumin vinaigrette. No complaints – I like to think that I make a pretty mean guacamole and the version at Dos Caminos hit all the right notes of creamy from the avocado, sharp acid from the lime, and pungency from the onion with a good seasoning of salt. My taquitos, though on the small side, were filled with tender spicy chicken and the fried tortillas were fresh as can be. We’ll have to go back soon for their margaritas…the frozen prickly pear rendition sounds particularly intriguing.

While walking up 6th Avenue the next day, I happily discovered that Tertulia, Spanish tapas heaven, is only a couple blocks down the street from my summer apartment, so I rounded together some other food-obsessed summers for a dinner because I figured the more people we had, the more dishes we could try.

Radish salad and grilled prawns

We ordered my favorites from the last time I visited – the brussel sprouts with pork belly and mojo picon, the flash-fried shishito peppers and sea salt, and my favorite, the roasted potatoes with pimenton and garlic all i oli, and rounded out the meal with the radish salad with baby rainbow carrots and anchovy vinaigrette and grilled Mediterranean prawns.

Forever favorite dishes at Tertulia

Everything was insanely delicious, from the super crispy taters to the acidic and pork-coated brussel sprouts to the prawn heads, out of which we enthusiastically sucked out the brain juices. I was reminded of Mark Bittman’s quote, “the juice in the head of the shrimp can only be described as God’s soup.” Add two bottles of the house red wine (we are still law students after all) and great conversation, and it was a pretty awesome, noisy night.

The next day, while work was slow, we created a huge Excel spreadsheet of all the NYC restaurants (I think the current tally is around 80) we wanted to visit, so prepare yourselves for a summer of epic eating and good company.

Dos Caminos Soho
475 W. Broadway at Houston Street
New York, NY 10012
212.277.4300

Tertulia
359 6th Avenue
New York, NY
646.559.9909

Tertulia

March 29, 2012 § 4 Comments

Of all the places in the world, Spain is the country I want to visit most. Barcelona, San Sebastien, Valencia, Madrid – they all sound like food-lovers’ paradises to me, with their beautiful and vibrant markets, fresh seafood, and ubiquitous tapas bars and cider joints. Tertulia is a place I’ve been wanting to visit for a while now. The chef, Seamus Mullen, has gotten great reviews from the New York Times and NYMag, and looking at the menu, I like that he sticks with traditional Spanish fare and does it very well instead of trying to twist it into something super modern. Another testament to the food? The fact that other chefs – like Mario Batali’s Iron Chef America sous chef, Anne Burrell (peeking at the camera in the first photo) – enjoy dining there on their off time. By the way, I was taking a picture of the interior and totally not being a creepster.

In an effort to eat (a lot) more vegetables lately, Laura and I started with the pimientos de padron – fried Shishito peppers with lots of sea salt – and the nuestras patatas – crispy potatoes with pimenton de la Vera and garlic all i oli. Holy crap, both of these dishes were so effing good. I would have been satisfied with these alone. The peppers were blistered and slightly sweet, and they had the crispness of a perfectly blanched green bean. Of course, tossing them in sea salt added exponentially to their flavor. Out of about 16 on our plate, I managed to get the only spicy one.

As for the spuds, I couldn’t figure out if they were fried or roasted, because these potatoes were expertly seasoned, super crispy on the outside, and creamy on the inside without any grease, and the all i oli was out of this world – garlicky and rich. Laura and I scraped up every last drop.

Our favorite dish by far, however, were the croquettes de jamon. Chef Mullen mixes scraps of prized jamon Iberico into his creamy bechamel and then quickly drops them in oil to give these babies the texture of fried soup, velvety and lovely on the inside. To make them even better, they come served with membrillo sauce, made of the quince fruit, and the sauce’s tartness cuts the luxuriousness of the croquette.

Our final dish were the crispy brussel sprouts with pork belly and mojo picon, a Spanish red pepper sauce. Our one, very small, gripe with this was the almost excessive use of vinegar which had us occasionally puckering our lips, but this was still an excellent take on sprouts, and I would still order it again.

So there you have it – a Spanish gem in the Washington Square Park area. It’s good that I don’t live in the neighborhood (yet), because I’d come here all the time, especially after a long day at work when I need a good glass of wine and some soul-warming food. Next time I visit, I plan on just ordering the classics – unadulterated jamon Iberico, boquerones, and pan con tomate – but this was a great vegetable-oriented introduction to Tertulia and fueled us for an entire afternoon’s worth of shopping in downtown Manhattan.