Brickyard brings the eats

I've been to Brickyard Gastropub a couple of times for drinks only, but when the bro and NR were looking for a place to share some pre-concert food and beverages, I suggested we try the Brickyard eats.

So try we did. It was a rainy and bleak evening, and after a quick visit to Holey Cream across the street, I joined NR and the bro with my cup of ice cream in tow. While they contemplated the menu, I tucked into Holey Cream's signature fat free chocolate and peanut butter frozen yogurt. Boy howdy. And while admittedly BYOIC is a little unorthodox, our server actually volunteered to bring me a real metal spoon with which to eat my treat. Um, YES PLEASE-- now that's how you earn yourself a tip!

Perfectly packed with the utmost care

While we sipped beers (them) and wine (me), the food began to arrive. The bro went rogue with their daily special, a crab bisque, after the soup received raves from our server (well, hearsay raves-- apparently she's allergic to shellfish). Yes, it was a gamble ordering shellfish bisque from a bar right before drinking a lot and jumping around at a concert, but the bro pronounced the bisque an "eight out of ten." And despite the fact that it kind of looked like vomit in its original state, apparently it stayed down throughout the course of the night. Score!

Bisque in a square bowl

Both boys went for the Brickyard Club as their main meal. And let me say, it looked spectacular. It was a huge sandwich that packed turkey, avocado, bacon, goat cheese, lettuce, and tomato onto thick, toasted bread. Back in my youth, I used to love the chicken club sandwich from a restaurant near our home, and this brought me back-- I started to crave it pretty intensely (bad, bad vegetarian me). All the ingredients were fresh, and the portion was huge, rendering the $13 plate a pretty good value. Oh, and the fries, of which I nicked a few, were pretty darn spectacular as well.

Huge, honkin' sando

Overall: a solid performance, Brickyard. Each time I go, I like the place a bit more. That bodes well for a happy and harmonious future.

Brickyard Gastropub
785 Ninth Avenue, between 52nd and 53rd Streets
212-767-0077

Minimalist brunch at Roc

On Sunday, AC and I met for brunch at Roc in Tribeca. Neither of us was really hungry at all (what were we doing at brunch, you might ask? Good question), so the following is what was consumed:

For me-- a green tea. This was presented just as a cup of already-steeped tea, no teabag, no press, no way to control how much the tea was steeped. I've never seen that before, and I can confidently say I don't like it. It also came off as somewhat cheap: $3 for this tiny cup of water? I dunno...

Too steeped for me

For AC-- first, the bread basket. Lots of bread here, including a very greasy focaccia that required a fork and knife due to the grease almost oozing out of the bread.

Maybe the napkin below is to sop up the grease?

Second, a cold tomato soup with a puck of breaded goat cheese in the center. AC liked it, and she ate about half of the soup with a good amount of bread.

Soup with oil and cheese

And that was it. There were some good looking pastas and salads emerging from the kitchen in addition to the paltry food the two of us consumed, so I think I'll hold off on rating the place on the off-chance I go back to give it a fair shake. Till then...

Roc
190 Duane Street at Greenwich Street
212-625-3333

Marvelous mussels at City Hall

Last Thursday, AS and I embarked on another dinner-finding mission in Tribeca. It was 8PM, and we had no reservations. Would this end well? We'll see.

After a bit of walking, we chanced upon a decent-looking option. It seemed nice inside, and there were some patio tables hosting a few enthusiastic diners. A glance at the menu revealed that this was City Hall-- and the options looked pretty good. We were sold.

A short chat with the convivial host later, we were seated at a table outside. Our unceasingly upselling waitress made her first appearance ("Can I start you off with some San Pellegrino or Fiji water?" Uh, no.). A few moments of deliberations passed, and we placed our order. Out came City Hall's version of the bread basket: a small boat of crudites with the occasional olive and pickle thrown in.

Lots of crunch!

The rest of our food arrived a relatively short time later. In a slight deviation from the Green Soup theme, AS pounced on their daily special-- white bean soup. Since there were a few sprinkles of green on top, I hereby appoint this soup Honorary Green Soup Chapter 3.

Green soup

AS's other dish that evening was the Prince Edward Island mussels, served in a white wine and garlic broth. Surprisingly, AS pronounced these mussels the best he's ever had, even including the very PEI mussels consumed in their home province. Well done, City Hall! From my perspective, the enormous bread baton served alongside the mussels seemed pretty appealing, for what it's worth (very little).

Superlative

My choice was the Warm Goat Cheese and Beet salad, served with shaved fennel and asparagus. In retrospect, I don't think this salad actually had asparagus in it. But there was some lettuce, and the large puck of goat cheese was quite tasty. There were thickly sliced beets at the bottom, which were sweet and tender, and the shaved fennel added some crunch and not much else. Overall, it was a decent salad, one that probably would have been enhanced quite a bit with the addition of asparagus. Oh well, c'est la vie.

Pretty

We were both pleasantly surprised by City Hall. The atmosphere was quite nice, and in general the food was high quality. Sitting outside on a quiet Tribeca side street on a beautiful evening with some good food and a gradual sunset... not too shabby in my book.

City Hall
131 Duane Street
212-227-7777

Salt & zest at the Odeon

Last Thursday, around 7:30, AS and I wandered around Tribeca looking for something to eat. We stopped into Terroir, which was pretty packed. We wandered. We stopped into "Marc Forgione" (f.k.a. Forge), and despite about half a house's worth of empty tables, we were told it would be about a 30-40 minute wait for a table. More wandering. Finally, we ended up at the Odeon, one of those downtown landmarks I've never been to. The host-- let's call him "Mr. Bean" because he looked exactly like Mr. Bean-- led us to a table.

The vibe at Odeon is cool, very "bustling brasserie." There's white butcher paper on the table, the ceilings are high, and the bread is good crusty french bread with a dish of butter. Yum.

Bread.

To start, AS embarked on Chapter 2 of the Green Soup Chronicles with the asparagus soup. A dollop of creme fraiche melted across the top, adding extra richness to an already rich and tasty soup.

There were no bursting goat cheese dollops, but we can't win 'em all

My entree was the warm goat cheese salad with pine nuts. It came as a good tangle of mixed greens, dusted with a sprinkling of toasted pine nuts and accompanied by a round of goat cheese on a thin, crunchy toast. The goat cheese was topped with something-- creamy? melted?-- that could have been more goat cheese, but the jury's out on that one. Oh, and one more thing: there was salt. Lots of salt. The whole salad packed one powerful punch of salt. I think it was the dressing, actually, that was somewhat oversalted-- and this comes from someone who has a very potent salt-tooth. (Huh?) It was still edible, though, and the saltiness actually enhanced the glass of sauvignon blanc I had on the side, but with a touch less salt it would have been a great salad. About an hour after dinner I was desperately, desperately thirsty.

You can't see the salt. But it's THERE.

AS went with the Satur Farms heirloom tomato salad, one of the daily specials. This was very prettily plated, and one taste revealed a hearty kick of orange zest-- actually something of a surprising taste when biting into a tomato. I think this salad could have used one extra ingredient (some sort of cheese, maybe), to truly balance it out, but I'm also not a chef, so take that with a grain of salt (ha! Get it?).

OrangAtos

Neither of us had been that full to begin with, so we skipped dessert for a nice early-evening stroll through the streets of Tribeca. The overall take on Odeon? Despite a few (salty) hiccups here and there, I actually liked it, and I'd easily return. That means a solid three Offset Spatulas in my book.

The Odeon
145 West Broadway
212-233-0507

Widening our wine bar horizons at Bocca di Bacco

Last week, on a particularly humid and balmy evening, AS and I ventured out for some food and drink. We ended up at Bocca di Bacco, a wine bar on Ninth Avenue that for some reason I've always passed by before. After a heated discussion among the hostesses, we were led to a table in the back, by the kitchen door (boo) but in the most AC-heavy part of the restaurant (yay... given the oppressive humidity and the balmy temps in the rest of the restaurant).

A bottle of wine was procured, and we started in on the bread that was placed on our table. Torn pieces of that common all-purpose bread often found around town-- flaky crust, chewy pull-apart insides-- paired well with the olive oil and started soaking up the wine immediately.

Rustic

AS started with the Fava Fagioli soup. Billed as a creamy fava bean, spinach, mushroom, and goat cheese soup, this turned out to be both very hot and very good. The highlight was a little exploding sphere of goat cheese hidden in the depths of the bowl, waiting to explode in the mouth (careful).

Green soup

For an entree, I went with the arugula & taleggio salad, paired with walnuts and a honey mustard sauce/dressing. This was quite good-- the dressing was surprisingly sweet, but with the big chunks of taleggio and the crunch of the walnuts, the whole thing worked pretty well. I would have liked an extra sprinkle of salt over the whole thing, but that's just me. I like salt.

Cheese and greens

AS went for the classic tomato and mozzarella. This came beautifully plated, clearly composed with more care than was required for what's usually a throwaway appetizer. The tomatoes were fresh, the pesto vibrant, and the mozzarella was high quality and admirably creamy. One of the better capreses I've come across, certainly.

A beauty

We debated dessert but ultimately went with Cold Stone, a few blocks away. Turns out Bocca di Bacco was a pleasant surprise-- the atmosphere is rustic but comfortable, and the food is a bit better and a bit more upscale than you'd expect. I'd certainly go back, especially since there are a few other dishes on the menu that I'd like to try, so I'd say Bocca di Bacco earns its four Offset Spatulas handily.

Bocca di Bacco
828 Ninth Avenue, between 54th and 55th Streets
212-265-8828

Tweaks, beets, and burgers at 44 & X

On a quiet Sunday night, the bro and I braved the hurricane-force winds for a local dinner at 44&X. It wasn't too crowded, so we got a table right away, abutting the windows looking out onto the scenic gas station across the street.

Our effusive waiter treated us to a recitation of the specials that was a pretty incredible performance, full of gestures and vigor and enthusiasm. It convinced the bro to order one of said specials, which, as we all know, can pretty much only lead to regret.

And thus the Bisque of Regret arrived. It was pea soup bisque, a huge vat of it, starkly green and swirled with different colors and blobs of stuff. The bro was starving and tucked right in, soon reaching for the salt shaker to add flavor, since it was flavorless. About halfway through the bowl, he began lamenting his lack of ordering skill. "Why do I suck at ordering?" he asked. It was a rhetorical question.

Green, the color of regret

Nonetheless, we were redeemed by the entrees. The bro went for the traditional burger, on an English muffin bun and accompanied by a big ol' mound of fries. The fries were hot and crisp and plentiful; the burger was covered in well-melted cheddar. Definitely a good burger.

There's an English muffin in there somewhere

I chose the terrine of roasted beets and goat cheese, wild watercress, blood oranges, candied walnuts, and blood orange vinaigrette. This was a curious concoction, not actually a terrine at all but more of a stack of crinkle-cut multicolor sliced beets. There was a dollop of whipped goat cheese that was so mild, it lacked the requisite saltiness or sharpness to bring the rest of the flavors into profile. There were also some incredibly sweet stewed figs, which are great by themselves but where a weird addition to the already-sweet beets. Overall, everything on the plate was good, but the ingredients didn't really come together cohesively.

Ceci n'est pas un terrine

And that was it-- quite enough for a Sunday night, if you ask me. 44 & X is a good neighborhood restaurant, a bit expensive for what it is, but definitely worth its three Offset Spatulas. Not a bad option if you're looking for some solid American food.

44 & X
622 Tenth Avenue, at 44th Street
212-977-1170

Vicarious linner at Mercury Bar

Last week Mom and Dad were in town for a brief spell, and the bro and I met them for lunch. Or, well, sort of. Mom and Dad and I had already had lunch, so the bro had lunch. Dad had soup so I guess that qualifies as linner. Mom and I had nothing. Whaaa?

Anyway, here's what was consumed. The bro got the BBQ chicken salad, which appeared to be a bunch of BBQ grilled chicken atop a mound of Caesar salad (note: presence of Caesar dressing unconfirmed; it could have been ranch). I also spotted some corn and some tortilla strips. So basically it looked like a combo of a Caesar, bbq chicken, and southwestern salad. The bro loved it, but then he's training for a half-marathon and is constantly ravenous, so I think the tabletop would have tasted equally as good.

There may have also been other stuff in there, I'm not sure

As mentioned earlier, Dad got the onion soup. He said the broth was thin and strangely spicy-- it had a bit of a kick, which one doesn't expect from onion soup. Overall? Meh.

Soup and arm

So there you have it. One lunch, one linner, and two abstentions. It was a nice afternoon.

Mercury Bar
659 Ninth Avenue
212-262-7755

Going for the soup and salad at Gossip. Yes, that's weird.

On Saturday night, AV and I had no destination in mind for dinner. He wasn't hungry; I was sort of hungry but didn't quite know what type of food I wanted. It was a bad combo. We walked up and down Ninth Avenue, getting rejected by place after place. Finally, inexplicably, we ended up at Gossip Bar & Restaurant. They had tables. They had TVs. And, ostensibly, they had food. We headed in.

Snagging a huge, elevated four-person booth, we settled in. Our server was nowhere to be found, and an enormous group of revelers at the table next to ours was thoroughly blocking the walking area between the bar and the tables, so we seized every opportunity we could to garner some attention. We started with a round of drinks-- diet coke and club soda, thank you very much. Yes, we were at a bar, and yes, we would only order food and soft drinks. I admit this entire night made no sense.

But order food and soft drinks we did. AV, who had had a hefty midafternoon snack courtesy of fresh sourdough and lamb sausage from the Union Square Greenmarket, stuck to a light repast of the black bean soup. He enjoyed it, aside from the incongruous lump of guacamole in the middle of the whole affair. Sans guac, it was a good bowl of soup.

Like a little green island

My choice was the beet and goat cheese salad. This salad was built upside-down: a tuft of greens on top, a generous base of ruby beets, a ring of toasted pistachios, and two huge (I'm talking ice-cream-scoop-size) dollops of warm goat cheese. It scratched my head at the composition, and then I dug in. Mmmmm, goat cheese. All the ingredients here were pretty standard, but you have to give them tons of credit for their heavy hand with the goat cheese. Well played.

A microgreen toupee hiding mountains of goat cheese

Oh, and there was bread. A complete afterthought, clearly baked-from-frozen rolls, but warm, and good with a nice slather of goat cheese.

So very average

So that was it. We were satisfied with our meal. Would we go back to Gossip? Sure, why not. It was a nice bar with a comfortable atmosphere, and the food was decent and well-priced. For what it was, Gossip is a three Offset Spatula restaurant-- a haven of downscale food, reasonably priced, devoid of pretense, and full of goat cheese.

Gossip Bar & Restaurant
733 Ninth Avenue, between 49th and 50th Streets
212-265-2720

A last al fresco gasp at Tenzan

I'm wayyyyyy behind on posts at this point, but here goes one from the archives. It was a Sunday evening, a beautiful Sunday evening in fact, clearly one of the last nice weekend nights of the Indian summer. Once again, AV and I found ourselves on the UES looking for a bite. And so we ended up at Tenzan, a modern-looking Japanese restaurant very close to AV's apartment that we had not yet tried.

Despite the slight chill in the air, we chose to sit outside to take advantage of possibly the last al fresco dining experience until next spring. I was quite hungry and in an extravagantly tearful mood, so what better thing to order than dumplings? Ah yes, there would be dumplings. There would indeed.

But first, AV's miso soup. He's a fan of miso soup, it turns out. And as he declared, it's hard to screw up miso soup. (N.B. Hard, but not impossible. One experience with miso soup at the Harvard dining hall a few years back proved that.)

Warm and well-executed

And then came the vegetable gyoza. They were pan-fried, for a change, which was delicious, but for textural reasons I still prefer my dumplings steamed. The filling was white and undefinable and delectable. The dipping sauce that came with the dumplings was citrus-inflected and curious; after a few bites, I switched over to soy sauce and was much happier. These dumplings were also accompanied by about a half-tablespoon of sweet and mysterious pickles. I gobbled them up and still don't know what they were.

Perfection, and pickles

Then came the entrees. AV had selected chicken teriyaki. Overall verdict was quite standard and a huge portion.

Unexplained broccoli

My choice was the "vegetable appetizer," described as "sauteed mixed vegetables." It ended up being a large plate of mixed stir-fried veggies (peppers, onions, zucchini, broccoli, mushrooms) with a hint of soy sauce umami and a sprinkle of sesame seeds. Delicious and verrry filling (I emerged from dinner pretty stuffed).

Huge portion of veggies

Overall, if I ever have a yen (har har har) for Japanese food on the UES, I'd definitely go back to Tenzan. The classics were well-executed and not insanely expensive, and the gyoza were craveable, if you're in the right mood. We experienced solidly executed three Offset Spatula fare and were happy because of it.

Tenzan
1714 Second Avenue (at 89th Street)
212-369-3600

LWF&D gets a first look (and taste, and sip) at SD26...

Last night, something incredible happened. At the last minute, I received notice that I had won a contest on Eater, receiving for my delightfully creative (ahem) interpretation of "Chef's Marathon" (man on chicken) two tickets to the Eater-sponsored back-to-school party at the yet-to-open SD26. A flurry of panicked phone calls later, AV was summoned, we were in our party-going finery, and we were standing outside a velvet rope on 26th street on the north side of Madison Square Park.

Once past the clipboard-wielders (yes, my name was on the list! Exciting!), we found ourselves in the bar area of a swanky new restaurant, surrounded by beautiful people eating beautiful things. The first noteworthy design element of the restaurant was the enomatic machine lighting up the sleek black bar.

Enomatic! And multiple size pours, which is great.

We only had a little while to admire the wines protected behind glass, though, because at that point the food started coming and didn't stop until we peeled ourselves out of a table a few hours later and forced ourselves out on the street for the good of our own personal health. But in the meantime, in the bar area, we were first offered a seafood/bean/tomato soup of sorts; AV, as the official taster, pronounced it something close to the best thing he'd ever tasted.

Seafood soup in tiny tureen

With beans 'n' pasta

That is, until he tasted the next offering: Meatballs! Pork and beef and perhaps some other meat, with olive tapenade and possibly crack. AV could barely express his nearly-unrestrained enthusiasm for this bite.

Little meatball soldiers

A perfect little sandwich

And then there was some sort of meat thing, with something that looked like foie gras. "Stupidly good."

Meat & stuff

Keep in mind that we were still at the bar area at this point; we hadn't made it more than 10 steps into the restaurant. At this point we decided to move to the actual bar to grab ourselves some cocktails. I had my eye on bubbly. We were midway through muscling our way into the bar crowd when I spotted a young partygoer. With a plate. That had cheese. CHEESE. Given that nothing else so far had been vegetarian, my radar went off with a crackle and our bar mission was abandoned; WE MUST FIND THIS CHEESE. Nearly sprinting further into the restaurant, we moved through a dark tunnel into the main dining room, where we found the following sight:

CHEESE AND CHARCUTERIE TABLE!!

With prosciutto slicer

I can't believe I didn't take any pictures of my cheese plate concoctions, but rest assured I stuffed myself with pecorino, parmesan, fresh ricotta from an enormous bowl, and a handful of other extremely high quality Italian cheeses. There were also breads-- I went for some to-die-for focaccia, chewy and flavorful. Midway through our four or five cheese plates apiece I made my way to the bar and grabbed us each a glass of Nicholas Feuillate champagne, which went down like Perrier with the sharp cheeses and bread.

Bubbly!

We had snagged seats at a table in the dining room, and from there we ate our cheese and held court, observing the others around us. The space itself is interesting-- deep within the building, it's windowless, but it's still bright and airy, with very high ceilings, a bright open kitchen, and a balcony overlooking the main floor on two sides of the rectangle. There's also a handful of private rooms spoking off from the main floor, which could be an interesting place to have a private dinner. But back to the food-- while we were seated, we grabbed delightful items from the servers passing apps around us. As follows:

Snapper tartare with an incredibly good salad

Carbonara-like pasta?

Lamb croquette

Some pasta we couldn't identify that wasn't a huge winner. Plus another meatball.

Oh, and in the meantime, a few shots of the room, the kitchen, and the crowd:

The main dining room

The balcony

The open kitchen

A man carrying a huge salami

At that point, we scampered up the stairs to check out the view from the top. And the views were pretty great:

Another view of the dining room

The weird multicolored hairballs adorning the wall

Close-up of hairballs

Hairballs and patrons from a different angle

More open kitchen action

On the upstairs balcony, we came upon an unmanned table offering two large plates of pasta. Nobody was there and we didn't feel comfortable helping ourselves, so we didn't take any. We turned our attention to the upstairs bar, which was mercifully free from crowds. AV worked his magic and managed to rustle up a signature house drink (don't know what was in that, but it was STRONG) and a couple of mojitos. They were delicious and packed a huge punch.

Pasta 'n' sauce

Pasta 'n' fish

Signature drink in front; mojito in back. Huge glasses.

While the drinks were in motion, I noticed a server behind the pasta table, and I snagged us a plate. The two offerings were a thick strand pasta in tomato and parmesan and a pasta salad of sorts with cherry tomatoes and seafood. I tried the tomato pasta, which would have been delicious but unfortunately was no longer piping hot. No matter; we were happy (and full!) enough.

Pastas!

So, in the end, we were stuffed. We were drunk. And we were very happy. Grabbing focaccia breadsticks to munch on our way out, we lugged ourselves through the door to prevent our stomachs from exploding. It was such a cool experience-- to dine in the midst of celebrities (at least a few Top Chef-testants were spotted, including Harold Dieterle and Dave Martin) in a new restaurant on a beautiful night in New York City. Oh, and it seemed as though SD26 would be a truly promising restaurant, so keep your eyes out for when it opens... it should be quite something! Many thanks to Eater for an incredible, delicious, and truly memorable night.