New York’s star DINING DESTINATIONS are numerous and ever-changing. TIM MAGEE squeezes the city’s best bits into ONE SHORT, FOODIE TRIP
A New York dining guide doesn’t tend to last longer than a pint of milk. In a city of fast-moving musical dining chairs, by the time a guide is published it has already passed its sell-by date. I’m writing this on a flight home from JFK, my second restaurant recce of New York in as many months. I’ve realised – eventually – over the 20 years of these visits and (gulp) tens of thousands of dollars that the world’s most dynamic dining destination’s stars are few that are still white-hot years after opening.
Most of us are only in New York for a few days. Time is precious. Location is critical. There is no need to spend much time north of the handsome piece of pie that is the Flatiron building. Most of the good eating spreads out like a hand south of Midtown. Two brilliant and affordable base camps are both relative newbies. The Lower East Side’s lovely Ludlow Hotel and, across the town in my favourite part of the island, in leafy Greenwich Village, The Jade.
The Ludlow is the kind of hotel New York does best and does often. Similar to city gems like The Greenwich and The Bowery, the rooms are a mix of hardwood flooring and rugs, with brilliant white subway brick bathroom tiles, sparkling giant mirrors and showers, and low-lit lobbies. Try and stay as high as you can to get the best from the city’s Marian blue natural light and a bird’s eye view of an historic and largely unchanged part of town that feels like having Brooklyn in Manhattan. The Ludlow is cornered by some of that history with Katz’s deli a bagel’s throw from the front door and one of my favourite food stores, the magnificent Russ & Daughters, a block away from that. The Ludlow is home to an outpost of the Torrisi brothers rampaging empire, the Dirty French. Unfortunately the precocious Dirty French can be all fur coat, no knickers when in full swing, like most of what the Torrisi boys do now, but it’s still sweet for breakfast.
The Jade has been open a couple of years now but is easy to miss as it’s camouflaged to look like the quaint apartment block neighbours that flank it on either side. Some rooms are small and again, higher is better, but all are finished like an Art Deco showroom. If you time it right The Jade can be very fairly priced, making this little jewel a very valuable find indeed.
Day one:
The first day is key. All told, you will have been in an airport or plane for twelve hours. Add taxis, and general faffing and a time change and your body and belly won’t know which way is up. Eat early. I have a routine that is as bullet-proof as it is delicious. Step one, I book Empellón Taqueria, Alex Stupak’s punky Mexican, for around 6pm. No later. Mexican food, real Mexican, not the Tex-Mex sludgefest that is common at home, but a zingy series of one-bite, face-slapping tacos that blast away any post-flight greenness and smash the reset button on my constitution. Step 2, I buy melatonin in any pharmacy on the way to Empellón. Step 3, I pair the over-the-counter natural jetlag killer with the best margarita in Manhattan when I order the bill. Two hours later I fall into a delicious long haul sleep before waking ready to squeeze the pips from the Big Apple.
Best for first timers:
Grand Central Station Oyster Bar is a good starting point for a New York first timer. Balthazar is as busy as Grand Central and as personal as Disneyworld but if you are going to take it on, park at the bar, chat to the white-coated bar staff over a Bloody Mary, have anything from the spanking fresh raw bar and rubberneck at the most impressive and lucrative restaurant machine on God’s green earth.
Big guns:
With a lighter heart than Per Se, a lighter hand that Jean-Georges and less precious than Le Bernardin, Daniel Humm’s Eleven Madison Park is New York’s finest 3-star. It is rated in the top five restaurants in the world by the World’s Best 50 list but nowhere has better service. I dined there a few years ago and it was very good, really good. Last month it was seminal. What was a gimmicky and prop-driven tasting menu is now a considered and engaging edible story of the city. If you don’t have the money or the inclination to turn it up to Eleven then window shop the Mad Men room and then skip across the pretty square to the affordable glory that is Eataly.
Best for a pit stop:
ABC Kitchen should have been a flash in the pan when this column was singing its praises nearly five years ago but ABC is as easy to love now as it was then. If you are zig-zagging the chains on Broadway like a manic sherpa and you need a buzzy lunch break in a handsome room just made for the ladies then join the other walk-ins at the bar of Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s real star.
Best for breakfast and brunch:
Maialino in Gramercy Park is home to the best breakfast and brunch in New York. Their cacio e pepe scrambled eggs, potato skins with pecorino and toffee-glazed brioche is worth the flight alone, but it can be hard to get a table. Over in the Village, Prune will cut back your hangover in manageable bites. Owner Gabrielle Hamilton’s book Blood, Bones & Butter is part diary, memoir and travelogue, and says all the right things about making out with men, women, and your tastebuds. Her book is gutsy but her cooking is delicate, precise yet homely. Prune only does a handful of things but it does them so well, and mostly to eggs. There are no reservations so get into character and queue with your coffee and the Times. Even prettier and probably better is the mighty Buvette (above). Sit at the most efficient bar in town and let Buvette wash over you. The menus are tiny, the dishes small but the food and atmosphere of this Francophile has made so much noise that the owners had to go and open in Paris.
Noodle soup for the soul:
Bizarrely, real ramen has yet to land in Ireland. Fourteen-hour stocks and ramen alchemy one-upmanship are three-a-penny even in London now with the shrines like Koya and Bone Daddies but with two bubbling outposts in NYC and one, brazenly, in Tokyo, Ivan Ramen bowls over all the competition. Ivan is the man for ramen.
Hottest new tickets:
Nowhere hypes a restaurant like New York city. Each issue of the dining section of the Times or Time Out New York should have a free sachet, rather than a pinch, of salt attached. Bâtard in Tribeca has been announced like the second coming. It is very good with some of the best-looking dishes in America, but it’s in a too-precious room with a chef that spends far too much of service in the dining room staring at his customers when he should be making sure all the dishes taste as good as they look.
There was something about the even newer Upland from the get go that wanted me to go. From the name, to a room that looks an Alice Waters pop-up in Fort Knox, and a menu delivered by Prius from Berkeley, I’ve been more than once and there is nothing on that menu I don’t want to eat and there is nowhere in the room I don’t want to sit. Walls of jars of preserved lemons on copper piped shelves with golden uplighting means that everyone and everything looks great, and it tastes even better. Upland keeps beckoning with that ultimate compliment, why has no one thought of this before?
Chinese and Mexican, but not as you know it:
Danny Bowien isn’t a household name here but he probably will be. It is impossible to pigeonhole his three Missions in San Francisco and New York as this homemade chef makes it up as he goes. And my, does he go. Danny’s food is early Massive Attack on a plate. No rhyme or reason, the odd miss but almost all straight-up, timeless hits. No longer a dirty term, fusion food has a new mission and Mission Chinese and Cantina in New York are the city’s tastiest twins.
Pizza:
Although Danny Meyer’s Marta is worth a twirl, the city’s best pizzas are in Brooklyn. Roberta’s and Franny’s sound like a Broadway play but they are the names of two unconnected wood-fired Aladdin’s caves in Brooklyn that are better than anything in Italy and cheap enough to warrant the cab fare there and back. The queues for Roberta’s can be nuts but only for dinner and Franny’s can be reserved online. Both are famous for their pies but there is much more to both than bread: Franny’s is great but Roberta’s, which helped put Brooklyn dining on the map, has over the last couple of years become
a national institution.
Tim Magee @ManAndASuitcase
This article appeared in a previous issue, for more features like this, don’t miss our September issue, out Saturday September 3.
Love THEGLOSS.ie? Sign up to our MAILING LIST now for a roundup of the latest fashion, beauty, interiors and entertaining news from THE GLOSS MAGAZINE’s daily dispatches.
The post The Glossy Dining Guide To New York appeared first on The Gloss Magazine.