Sunday, May 30, 2010

Best Pork - Part 2


Is roast pork belly the new black? Everyone in Melbourne seems to be banging on about pork, discussing how to get the best pork crackling, watching how to make it on Masterchef and generally just eating pork incessantly. And isn't it on every menu? From Izakaya Den to Coda to Gills Diner.  Since when did everyone develop this obsession with all things swine? Pork has always had a special place in my heart, probably a result of my Filipino heritage. Roast suckling pig on a spit (lechon) was for special family occassions and the crackling was particularly revered. Also one of my most memorable meals was on a trip to Ubud to try Bali's most famous dish, babi guling, Balinese roast suckling pig.  The young suckling pig is used because of its tenderness, and is slow cooked and spit-roasted to perfection. So delicious. But back to New York!

A highlight from our epic food tour with Famous Fat Dave was a visit to a lovely little shop called Porchetta in the East Village.  And what, you ask, is this porchetta? Traditionally, it’s a gutted, boned-out whole hog heavily seasoned and restuffed with some of its innards, rolled up like a porky bûche de Noël, and then spit-roasted over a wood fire. Served in slices or in sandwiches, it’s a festival dish but also a popular street food, and can be found at the finer food stalls and butcher shops of Rome as well as dished out from trucks and vans set up along the highways outside of Florence. It is to the town of Ariccia—widely regarded as the porchetta capital of the world—what the hot dog is to Coney Island.

So Porchetta's porchetta is a variation on the traditional, making use of free range pork loins, wrapped in pork belly, then seasoned with wild-fennel pollen, thyme, sage rosemary, garlic and generously seasoned with salt and pepper.  These heavenly hog rolls are then tied up with string and oven-roasted until the meat is tender and the skin has turned into crispy, golden crackling.  Served up in a simple ciabatta roll this dish was nothing short of drop dead delicious with the lovely contrasting textures of soft, juicy pork meat and the chewy fatty crackling. Heaven!

Porchetta's porchetta roll 8/10





Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Best Pizza

I really love pizza. If I had to choose my last meal on earth, it would most probably be an Italian style woodfired marguerita pizza with fresh fior di latte. So finding a great New York-style pizza was a top priority. This style of pizza is well known for its huge slices that have a thin crust, foldable (as it's so large) with lashings of tomato sauce and mozzarella.  Our first tasting of New York style pizza was at Lombardi's in Little Italy, a real institution if ever there was one.  Gennaro Lombardi was an Italian immigrant who moved to the US in 1897 to open a small grocery store.  An employee of his started making pizza for the store to sell and had to adapt the traditional Italian style to America (the wood-fired ovens and mozzarella di bufala were substituted with coal powered ovens and fior di latte) - it became so popular they opened Lombardi's, the first US pizzeria, in 1905. Talk about  a place steeped in history!  Incredibly, Lombardi's is still as popular as it was 100 years ago, with the restaurant now expanded to the building next door, extra seating installed, the place was buzzing and had queues out the door.  The pizza arrived served on a silver platter (see picture above), with a thin crust, light tomato sauce and slices of fresh mozzarella. What a classic! The crust was very thin and actually had black spots underneath due to the coal fired brick oven. Delicious.
Our next New York pizza experience took us completely by surprise.  We had just made the move from hectic downtown Manhattan to a new hostel in Bushwick, Brooklyn. I think we all were glad to get out of the craziness of Chinatown and on our first night we decided to stay low key and go to the local pizza place, Roberta's, one of only a handful of places to go to in this mostly industrial neighbourhood. It was freezing cold, grey and miserable and everywhere looked deserted as we walked up to the exterior of the restaurant, an ugly, grey building with a metal door which looked extremely dingy and uninviting (see above pic!). However, stepping inside was another world. The place was packed to the rafters with a friendly, hip, young crowd, families sitting around wooden communal tables, a bright red wood fire oven roaring away, and a cosy bar at the back. A friendly waiter came up to us straight away and said it would be a 15 minute wait, did we want to hang out for a bit? We were very happy to, and soon discovered they had an outside seating area, complete with outdoor bar and backyard tent to keep the cold out.  The whole vibe was very warm, cosy, inviting, and the decor was DIY (check out the cute fairy lights!) fleamarket cool - we felt at home at once! Although they offerred a marguerita style pizza, we felt drawn to the Millenium Falco - tomato, parmigiano, pork sausage, garlic, onions, bread crumbs, and basil - and we were well rewarded. This was really one of the best pizzas ever, perfectly balanced array of toppings with a delightful, chewy crust. A simple salad of greens, gorgonzola and roasted walnuts with a bright vinaigrette was the perfect side, as was a bottle of their Italian house red.
Our last New York pizza experience was the very last stop on Famous Fat Dave's epic 4-hour eating tour.  The way it works on the tour is that Dave will order a serve at each place, but if we really like it, he is happy to get us seconds, thirds and even fourths if we wanted.  As we really had to pace ourselves to make sure we made the most of each tasting, this was never necessary - until we visited L&B Spumoni Gardens in Bensonhurst, South Brooklyn that is. This place opened in 1939 and specialises in Sicilian-style pizza, thick crust, cut into squares, and topped with mozzarella cheese UNDER the sauce and then sprinkled with grated parmesan. We ordered another slice quick smart. It was that tasty. And then of course we had to try the spumoni. So what the hell's spumoni?  It is basically an ice cream that is a cominbation of vanilla, chocolate and pistachio that is both creamy and icy, all served in a tiny little paper cup. Another classic combo.


As you can tell by the scores, I couldn't help but love them all...

Lombardi's, Little Italy 8/10
Spumoni's, Bensonhurst 10/10
Roberta's, East Brooklyn 9/10

Monday, May 10, 2010

Best Cupcake

New York is most probably the cupcake capital of America, if not the world.  Magnolia Bakery, of Sex and the City fame, has played a major role in creating the cupcake frenzy that has swept across the globe and most nights has people, ok tourists, queueing out the door (it's open past midnight on Fri/Sat nights). Located on a picturesque street in the West Village (where we saw film crews filming near by) this cute, boutique bakery sells retro dessert treats such as cherry cheesecake, icebox pie (named after the ice box that they were kept cool in when there was no electricity) and old-fashioned cupcakes such as chocolate, vanilla, and lemon all topped with a lovely, light and luscious butter cream frosting.  When we asked what the most popular cupcake ordered was, we were surprised to hear it was the vanilla vanillla - the vanilla cupcake with the vanilla icing (and the most popular colour for the icing is pink!).

However, after speaking to a couple of local New Yorkers, we were told that Crumbs was where the real cupcake action was at.  Faced with dozens of heady and decadent flavours such as Coffee Toffee, Fudge Chocolate Chip and Devil's Food (chocolate cake with classic vanilla buttercream filling and frosting, sprinkled with chocolate crumbs and mini chocolate chips) - this place was clearly not for the faint hearted. After much deliberation, we ordered the Vanilla Chocolate Sprinkle, Grasshopper, Peanut Butter Cup and Toasted Coconut. One of the first things we noticed was the size of the cupcake - they were enormous! The second thing we noticed was how rich and moist these cupcakes were.  The Grasshopper (pictured below) had a rich, gooey, chocolate fudge centre, topped with mint flavored cream cheese frosting, chocolate cake crumbs, edged in mini chocolate chips with a vanilla buttercream rosette. These were cupcakes on steroids.



In an attempt to make a fair comparison, I've rated each place's vanilla cupcake with vanilla frosting but I have to say they both were pretty amazing in their own way. In the end Magnolia won out for me as I loved the light, fluffy, extra sweet frosting!


Magnolia Vanilla Vanilla - 9/10
Crums Vanilla Vanilla Sprinkle - 8/10

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Best Lobster Roll


Lobster rolls were a bit of a discovery for us Aussies.  This delicacy is associated with the state of Maine, but is also commonly available at seafood restaurants in other New England states and on Eastern Long Island in the U.S., where lobster fishing is common. It is basically the seemingly at odds combination of fresh cooked meat of a lobster, tossed with mayonnaise and served on a hot dog bun.  Our first taste was courtesy of Famous Fat Dave who took us to Luke's Lobster in the East Village which doles out fresh, afforadable lobster, straight from Maine. The cool, sweet meat contrasted wondrously with the warm, buttery roll - what a taste revelation! After tasting this, we were keen for more.  In Brooklyn, some friendly locals recommended we head to Walter's for dinner, a seafood restaurant on Grand St, Williamsburg. This place was fantastic, and something we felt that Melbourne definitely lacked. This was an upscale food experience in a down to earth, classic, bistro setting. We started off with half a dozen oysters on the half shell with Mexican sparkling wine, my sister ordered the lobster roll and I ordered 1 1/2 Lb steamed lobster with mashed potatoes, sauteed string beans and drawn butter.  The drawn butter was an unctuous liquid that looked like a pool of gold in which to dunk the lobster meat. Normally, I am not this indulgent when it comes to food but the steamed lobster with sides was US$35. Plus the bottle of Gruet St Vincent's sparkling pinot noir/chardonnay from New Mexico was great value at US$30 too.  Amazing food at a great price. Of course, we topped it all off with key lime pie for dessert. One of the best dining experiences ever!

We were still so enamoured by lobster rolls that on our stopover at LAX  on the way back to Melbourne we ordered one last lobster roll at what appeared to be the only restaurant, other than McDonalds and Burger King, in the place. Sadly, and I suppose not surprisingly, it was pretty terrible!

Luke's Lobster Roll - 9/10
Walter's Lobster Roll - 8/10
LAX's Lobster Roll - 4/10

Monday, May 3, 2010

Best Hot Dog


So where do you find the quintessential hot dog in New York City I hear you say? Trying my first "weiner" (don't you just love that word?) was right up there on my list of essential New York experiences. On my first day I was so excited I grabbed a hot dog from the first street vendor that I saw outside my apartment on Canal St, Chinatown. Sauerkraut, onions, mustard and ketchup please! Probably no surprise that for US$1.75 it was a pretty ordinary experience. But the quest for the best hot dog in New York had begun. So where to next?  Katz's Deli has been around for literally a hundred years and is a total New York institution.  While best known for their pastrami on rye they also do a mean hot dog (made the old fashioned way, on-site and kosher, of course). This hot dog did not let me down and was very tasty and satisfying,  a classic dog in a classic setting. The only problem was - too expensive. Next up was Gray's Papaya.


I had been dreaming of Gray's Papaya ever since I saw an Anthony Bourdain episode where he has the "Recession Special" - 2 dogs and a papaya drink for $4.75 - bargain or what?? This 24/7 chain has 4 locations on the west side of Manhattan and is famous for their inexpensive and high quality sausages.  The huge neon sign and lurid fluro lighting makes this place a magnet for late night drunken revellers (and erm homeless people) and sure enough, after a night out in the East Village, Gray's Papaya beckoned.  But uh oh, we were fooled by their biggest competitor - Papaya King (the sign just said 'Papaya' and looked exactly the same, a block away from where the real one was!). So after a false start, we finally managed to get to Gray's and had a great hot dog, and while it was quite a thin, long sausage, it was flavoursome and the papaya drink was strangely good to wash it down with.  Next up was Nathan's Hot Dog Stand in Coney Island which is famous, especially for their July 4 Annual Hot Dog Eating Contest (current record is sixty-eight hot dogs & buns (H.D.B.) in ten minutes).   This was the ORIGINAL New York hot dog, started out by a Polish immigrant in 1916 whose wife came up with a killer recipe for a hot dog which was to become world famous for its quality and taste.  These babies were all beef and had good flavour - definite thumbs up. Finally, Crif Dog in the East Village is NYC's No 1 Weiner (so their advertising says).   They are definitely marketing to a more discerning, up market, trendy but still young crowd with its groovy location in St Marks Place complete with a telephone booth outside which is actually the secret entrance to nightclub PDT (Please don't tell).  Here, they deep fry the sausages in great big bubbling vats of oil and they offer a whole range of different toppings, very different to the more traditional places I had been to. There are basically two types of sausages to choose from: The New Yorker is plain all-beef dog and The Crif Dog was their handmade, naturally smoked beef and pork dog, all served with the usual toppings, mustard, ketchup and onions. Or you could get a bit creative by trying something like The Chiuhuahua is a bacon wrapped dog with avocado and sour cream or the Spicy Red Neck was bacon wrapped with chilli, coleslaw and jalepenos.  One bite into the Spicy Red Neck (pictured below) I knew that this was the best hot dog I had ever tried - it had a kind of snap to it and tasted sensational - mission accomplished!

Canal St Hot Dog Street Vendor 5/10
Katz's Deli, Lower East Side - 9/10
Papapa King, Lower East Side 6/10
Gray's Papaya, Lower East Side 8/10
Nathan's Original Hot Dog Stand, Coney Island 9/10
Crif Dogs, St Marks Place - 10/10



Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Best Drink

Morir Soñando is Spanish for “to die dreaming,” and is a popular drink at Dominican restaurants in New York City.  This unique experience was the first stop on an epic 4 hour eating tour with Famous Fat Dave which we had booked previously after discovering him through an Anthony Bourdain 'No Reservations' episode.  We were driven in style, in a vintage white Checker cab, to Reben Luncheonette in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which has been serving Morir Soñando for at least 45 years.  The guys behing the counter did not speak a word of english but their friendly smiles and cheerful banter made us 3 aussie girls feel right at home in what we were told was a mostly working class, Dominican neighbourhood down under the Brooklyn Bridge.  Dave went in and did the ordering and we watched as they blended fresh orange juice, regular milk, vanilla extract, sugar and carefully mixed and cooled the concoction down by pouring the drink from one cup to another with lots of ice cubes. These simple ingredients combined to make a drink that was surprisingly refreshing and delicious, and had a lovely creamy and tart taste. It was the perfect breakfast drink on an empty stomach and would be great on a hot day too. 7/10

Monday, April 26, 2010

Best Pork


According to my sister, one of our first culinary stops had to be Momofuku Noodle Bar in the East Village. Although not exactly the newest thing on the New York dining scene having opened in 2003, there is still a major buzz around chef/owner David Chang who is continuing to expand his mini Momofuku empire with a fifth restaurant in the works (rumoured to be called Momofuku Bakery & Milk Bar's Crack Pie, Cereal Milk, and Compost Cookies!)  According to the website, momofuku means 'lucky peach' in Japanese, however good ol' wikipedia says it's most likely a reference to Momofuku Ando - the inventor of instant noodles.

After arriving late and slightly frazzled, we slid into our seats at the front of the restaurant and were immediately struck by the cool, calming, minimalist interior design of the place. The room was small, but long with a bar along one side with stools for single diners and larger tables with square wooden blocks for chairs on the other side. The pork buns arrived and we were surprised by the open buns - this was definitely a new twist on the traditional pork bun.  It also allowed us to see the two thick slices of delicious pork belly and the shape and size made it really easy to hold. Biting into the bun, we knew at once this was incredible - the flavour of the roast pork, the softness of the bun was balanced perfectly with thinly sliced cucumbers, fresh spring onion and a beautiful, sweet and light hoisin sauce. It was like the best peking duck pancake you ever had taken to the next level! Needless to say, we immediately ordered two more servings.  And still wanted more.  So Momofuku's pork buns definitely lived up to the hype - perfect! 10/10.