Hell's Kitchen reinvents itself: Plywood and Openings!

Lots of goings-on on Tenth and Ninth Avenues these days! First, an opening:

Burgers, shakes, and smoothies

Blue 9 Burger is open, and as of Sunday they were giving out a "Free welcome meal." No freakin' clue what that means or how long it will last, but fans of purported In-n-Out style burgers should head to Ninth between 52nd and 53rd and investigate.

And for fans of various forms of non-American food, two bits of plywood to report:

On Tenth Avenue between 48th and 49th, Casa Havana is staking its claim, promising to bring "Best Cuban Sandwiches" to the area. Props on the creative window papering as well.

Ready-made case poking through the window

Best? We'll see about that...

On Ninth Avenue between 51st and 52nd, right smack next to Hummus Kitchen, there's a Noodle Bar a-coming. Details are scant on this puppy, but interest is high...

That tiny little orange sign foretells noodles

Should be an interesting September!

From Vegas with love: Part 4

On Tuesday, we ventured to the Grand Canyon, with a minor detour to In-n-Out burger. When we got home, AV collapsed for a nap, while I moped around, insanely exhausted but unable to sleep. Finally I woke AV up in an agitated state, insisting that I was losing it and needed real food (after eating approximately 100 carby snacks in the car during the day). Still battling the fog of sleep, AV handled my agitation admirably and brought us downstairs to Noodles for some food.

Noodles is the Bellagio's dim sum bar. Let me say this up front: yes, Vegas is an expensive town. It's especially expensive if you're staying at an expensive hotel. Most of the time, I was in vacation-spending mode and thus wasn't too bothered by the prices. However, at Noodles I was. Here's why:

The dishes we got were as follows: One chicken pad thai, which was pretty standard. And one side order of baby bok choy in garlic sauce, pretty mediocre (for the record, I had wanted dumplings but they didn't have veggie-only dumplings, they only had pork-and-veggie dumplings. I had misread that when scoping out the menu). Together, without tax and tip, those dishes cost $30. With tax and tip, it was closer to $40.

Read that again. Almost $40 for one noodle dish and one veggie side, which in Manhattan (one of the most expensive cities in the world) would have set us back less than $15. We both felt a little bit ripped off.

Spun gold? No, noodles

Precious vegetables

So, of course, we placated ourselves with gelato. The Bellagio is crawling with gelato, available in three separate locations, to my count. I had gelato pretty much every single day. Their gelato wasn't the best I've ever had, but the portions were huge and it was tasty. This time around, AV went with Oreo; I chose half Snickers, half coconut sorbet, packed full of shards of coconut. And, tummy packed with gelato, I went to sleep. I believe it was 7:30PM.

Coconut on top

Oreo, with authentic gelato paddle spoons

A quick stop into Obao

'Twas the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and as I found myself in the city rather than at home in Massachusetts as was customary (long story, but I actually had a nice low-key Thanksgiving in NYC), BL and I took the opportunity to have our (semi-) monthly catch-up dinner. We trekked through the abandoned wastelands of Midtown East to try Obao, Michael Huynh's newest outpost. It's gotten a lot of buzz but mixed reviews, so I was curious to try it out.

Like the rest of Midtown East, the place was pretty much deserted. As I was led through the empty noodle bar into the pretty, serene dining room in the back, I spotted one other three-person party having dinner in a booth; they vacated shortly after I sat down, so BL and I had the place to ourselves until we paid the check, at which point another small group came in to take our place. No matter; especially when it was this quiet, the dining room was a nice place to be, full of handsome dark woods and anchored by two long communal tables down the center.

Our server was friendly but seemed still to be getting her footing-- in fact, the whole staff seemed overwhelmingly tentative. It took a good five minutes for our server to return to the table and inform BL that his order of a birch beer would go unfulfilled: they had run out. (A huge run on birch beer earlier in the day? Who knows?) However, we didn't mind at all-- we chatted as we waited for our much-anticipated dishes to emerge.

BL went with the Singapore Noodles, which were thin noodles served along with Chinese sausage, shrimp, crispy lard, and chives. The noodles were served in an appealing little metal wok-like dish, which I liked. BL approved of the dish, and when prompted gave it a three-spatula designation.

Noooooooodles

My choice was a no-brainer: the papaya salad. This was an artfully disheveled pile of deliciousness, although the taste was unlike any papaya salad I'd had. There was some spice-- pickled plum powder, perhaps?-- that dominated the flavor profile. The shredded coconut was an interesting touch but didn't add much in the way of taste. The crispy shallot, however, added both taste and texture. Yum.

Offbeat papaya salad

And that was it. A quick trip to the bathroom revealed an unmarked door and no light (literally, the socket had no light bulb). An attempt to pay with credit card revealed that they're cash only. So the final verdict? Worth a stop if you're in the neighborhood, but I wouldn't trek across the city to go-- it's a three Offset Spatula spot that's overshadowed by all the great Thai options much closer to home.

Obao
222 E. 53rd Street, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues
212-308-5588

Branching out to a new Thai on 9th

Two weekends ago, I attended the incredible show Fantasy Football: The Musical?, written by my good friend DI, part of the New York Musical Theater Festival. After laughing heartily for an hour and a half, fellow showgoers AV and JR and I were hungry. So we scurried around the corner to Aura Thai on Ninth Avenue.

The decor of Aura is plain and simple, but we were all so ravenous we didn't care. We started with a couple of apps-- first up, JR's fried calamari with sweet chili sauce. This dish looked like onion rings and was well received by both JR and AV, who sniped a ring or two.

A tangle of veg 'n' squid

AV and I shared the vegetable dumplings. These were large, half-moon/ravioli-style dumplings filled with a mixture of shredded veggies. The sweet sauce was drizzled over the top, which meant we weren't able to control the mixture of dumpling and sauce through dipping, always a key part of the experience. Overall, these weren't my favorite dumplings in the NYC Thai Restaurant Dumpling Pantheon; the filling tasted like generic frozen veggies, and I wasn't a huge fan of the half-moon shape.

Pretty, but plain inside

Moving on, JR got a curry dish... and shamefully I can't remember exactly which one. But it was ample and flavorful and delicious, according to its consumer.

Some sort of curry? Maybe?

AV went with the pad see ew with chicken. Lots of green veggies made this one a winner in my book... and AV was also a fan.

Wide noodles and bursts of bright green

My choice was, of course, papaya salad. This was a big portion with lots of green beans; the papaya was also cut spaghetti-style rather than in small matchsticks, which was interesting. The vinaigrette here was heavy on the lime and light on the umami, which made the whole dish light but lacking in the strong flavor usually associated with papaya salad.

It also came with sticky rice. Very, very gluey sticky rice.

Overall, we were so hungry that the food at Aura hit the spot. But the quality of food was definitely eclipsed by the other Thai options a few blocks up on Ninth. As a result, I wouldn't necessarily return to Aura unless I were ravenous and right in the area, which means Aura earns a two Offset Spatula designation. Done and done.

Aura
462 Ninth Avenue, between 35th and 36th streets
212-971-8530

A no-go at Osha Thai Kitchen

Sunday evening, AV and I continued our perennial quest for good Thai food by visiting Osha Thai Kitchen on the UES. I had heard about Osha, a new addition to the neighborhood, a few weeks ago and wanted to check it out, so off we went.

Osha is a tiny sliver of a storefront, but the restaurant itself sports some spiffy decor. The marble tables have an interesting pattern, which distracts only briefly from the ornate chandeliers and empty picture frames on the wall. If you visit Osha, take a quick jaunt to the bathroom, which is one of the nicer in recent memory. Just try not to tip over the serene floating-flower-birdbath next to the toilet.

But seriously folks, a beautiful dining room only gets you so far. How was the food? Regrettably, not as great as we had hoped. We started with two appetizers-- AV with the chicken satay and me, of course, with the veggie dumplings (listed, inexplicably, as "J dumpling" on the menu). The satay came with four generous skewers, a pro in AV's book, and some high-quality foliage. However, AV deducted points for the peanut sauce format-- rather than a container of sauce on the side, Osha had pre-slathered the skewers with sauce, eliminating the ability to control your own sauce-to-meat ratio. Also, AV wasn't a big fan of the chopped peanuts sprinkled over the top. A small taste of the peanut sauce revealed that it was pretty good but nothing knock-your-socks-off amazing.

Like tropical birds. Or fish. Or something.

Things went from mediocre to bad on my side of the table. My J dumplings came four to an order and were an appealing emerald color. But one bite revealed tough, hard dumpling skin at the top of each dumpling, as though the skins had not cooked through at the point where each dumpling was pinched together. But more importantly, the filling was--well-- just plain weird. There are many different types of veggie dumpling fillings, from mostly greens to minced veggies to peanutty goodness, but this could barely be called a filling: it was as though the kitchen had opened a bag of frozen Bird's Eye veggies and wrapped them, unaltered, in dumpling skins. Each dumpling held approximately one whole pea, one corn niblet, two or three carrot dices, and a forlorn shred of spinach. Whaaa? The whole thing was flavorless, an unfortunate condition made even worse by the fact that the pomegranate dipping sauce had absolutely no flavor either-- not salt, not spice, nothing but a faint, watery sweetness. Fail.

Lots of promise

Note the uncooked skin at the top

Still, we had high hopes for our entrees. AV chose the Kea Moa with chicken, a mixture of wide ribbon noodles, egg, chili, garlic, onion, and bell pepper. He seemed to enjoy it, noting that it was pretty darn spicy, but just on this side of mouth-incapacitating.

Gotta love wide rice noodles

My choice was, as always, papaya salad. It was a pretty good rendition, although not a huge portion, and also quite spicy. It satisfied my Thai food craving, at the very least, which the dumplings had failed to do.

A nice mixture, but beware of spice

When we went into Osha, we unconsciously or not were pitting it against Sala Thai, the reigning Thai-food-within-a-few-blocks-of-AV's-place champion in our books. As we ate our Osha food and gazed at Sala just a few hundred yards across the street, we felt wistful. At least from my perspective, Osha failed to unseat Sala in either the dumpling or papaya salad categories. It's cheaper, yes, and the dining room offers a nicer eat-in experience, but it really comes down to the food. That leaves Osha with two Offset Spatulas and the caveat that it's still new and may need some time to work out a few kinks.

Osha Thai Kitchen
1711 Second Avenue, between 88th and 89th Streets
212-427-3077

Another dumpling run at Sala Thai

After a relatively un-relaxing weekend, AV and I were looking for a low-key dinner. And naturally, said dinner had to be Thai. And, of course, include dumplings. God bless AV for humoring my ridiculous, insatiable, and everlasting cravings. Off to Sala Thai we skipped for some veggie dumplings and papaya salad.

Things proceeded much the same way they did on our previous visit. AV began the evening with a diet coke, which came in a cool tall glass but was almost entirely flat. Demerit.

But then the dumplings redeemed. These dumplings are green and slippery and craveable. Their filling isn't the typical chopped-veggie filling; it's long strands of some green vegetable. The dipping sauce was pretty spicy this time around but still delightful.

Lovely little parcels

The innards

After we split the dumplings, our entrees arrived. AV had strayed from his habitual pad see-ew to try the drunken noodle with chicken. It was a good choice-- I tried a few of the veggies, which were delish. And the noodles are so satisfying. Who doesn't like noodles?

Meat 'n' veg 'n' noodles 'n' steam

I went with the papaya salad (obvi), which was a manageable portion (not a daunting tower of papaya, as it was last time). Sala makes a damn tasty version of the salad, and the plate is lined with a bed of lettuce, which I like-- it adds a bit of crunchiness and heft to the dish. For some reason the tiny cherry tomatoes in the mixture were sort of mushy and gross, but everything else was top-notch.

Slawwwwww

And there you have it-- craving assuaged. For now, that is. When you're itching for Thai and want a no-fuss meal, Sala Thai fits the bill. Therefore, it keeps its solid three Offset Spatula rating.

Sala Thai
1718 Second Avenue, between 89th and 90th streets
212-410-5557