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23Posts
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Nan Thai expands to Buckhead The Midtown staple, Nan Thai, is now expanding to a new location in Buckhead set to open on October. Atlanta restaurateurs Nan and the late Charlie Niyomkul’s daughter, DeeDee Niyomkul, will help lead the new location with her mother. Expect elevated Thai dishes including a mushroom wonton soup ravioli with shitake, chives, shallots, garlic, cilantro, and vegetable consomme, and Nan’s signature filet of whole red snapper with savory three-flavor chili sauce, fried okra, and eggplant. Linda Boualavong will lead the cocktail program with drinks like Forbidden Fruit with 400 Conejos mezcal, tamarind, cardamom syrup, and chili-lime bitters.
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James Beard-Nominated Communion Chef Opens a New Spot in the Central District! Visitors to Métier Brewing Company’s Cherry Street taproom are now able to get a little something special with that beer. A quick-service restaurant from James Beard-nominated chef Kristi Brown is now open inside it, called Lil’ Brown Girl. Anyone who has eaten at her lauded restaurant, Communion, or had her catering from That Brown Girl Cooks will recognize the dishes — some of her greatest hits are coming back at Lil’ Brown Girl, albeit sometimes in slightly altered formats. The black-eyed pea hummus from Communion will be there, she tells Eater Seattle. So will a version of a salad she made for catered box lunches. It was a boxed mixed greens salad with ham and sweet potato salad and a fried chicken thigh on top with jerk ranch dressing. For Lil’ Brown Girl, chef Lynn Lewis made it into a sandwich, with fried chicken, greens, a spread of roasted yam potato aioli on one side and jerk ranch on the other.
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A pizza party at the library! Anthony “The Big Cheese” Mongiello is a Brooklyn pizza legend, holding the claim to be the first to patent stuffed pizza crust, before Pizza Hut. Hear his story, beefed up with legal drama and tales of his days growing up in Bensonhurst on Wednesday, October 16 at 6:30 p.m. held at the Center for Brooklyn History at Brooklyn Public Library at 128 Pierrepont Street, in Brooklyn Heights.
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This Restaurateur Helped Define a Brooklyn Era: Now, He’s on to Manhattan! After all these years, what is it that pulls serial Brooklyn restaurateur, Andrew Tarlow, across the river? It turns out it’s the stunning, 2,400 square-foot space with a wood-fired oven where I Trulli resided since 1994. Rustic Italian newcomer Borgo opens for dinner, on Friday, September 27. Borgo is the first Tarlow restaurant to open in a decade since Greenpoint’s Achilles Heel. Before that, he opened Diner over 20 years ago, before Williamsburg was what it is today. He’s also behind Marlow & Sons, Roman’s, and She Wolf, along with natural wine shop, Stranger Wines. The 140-seat spot, debuts as a trattoria with a wood-burning oven, an open hearth, and a martini cart. “It’s really epic,” Tarlow says of the hearth in a walk-through. The space features two large rooms with arched entryways, along with the original I Trulli bar, and an 800-square-foot back garden. The food parallels a bit with Roman’s in Fort Greene, featuring seasonal Italian dishes and straightforward Italian mains. Yet the size of the restaurants allows the kitchen to be a bit more ambitious. “The bigger kitchen and the bigger facilities allow me to do more: It’s like the alligators grow as big as their tank kind of thing.”
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Next Stop Vegan Next Stop Vegan, a Downtown Brooklyn restaurant, specializes in meat and dairy-free Dominican food that has garnered local fanfare (the business was recently the subject of a Righteous Eats video as well). The team recently also added a Greenpoint sibling.
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Moonburger At least in certain subsets of New York, Moonburger has fanfare in equal measure amongst those who eat meat as well. These burgers first made their debut at a drive-thru in Kingston, New York before the team expanded with other upstate outposts in New Paltz and Poughkeepsie. Recently, it debuted its first in Brooklyn. Don’t skip the seasonal shake flavors, made with oat milk, as well. Vegetarian burgers can be made vegan with a cheese substitute.
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Desi Stop It can be extraordinarily hard to find options for late-night drunchies that are vegan or vegetarian. Behold Desi Stop: At this 24-hour deli, the samosa burger will only run you $5 and it’s made with actual vegetables: quinoa, chickpeas, and walnuts. It’s a worthy on-the-go snack no matter the time of day.
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Sunday C&C is located in the Bowery Market, a permanent home for this concept first launched at Smorgasburg. Owner Christian Torres is a one-man operation serving up Latin American vegan food with a rotating menu. When it opened it featured Venezuelan-style arepa that’s made with sweet corn, housemade cashew “mozzarella” with ssamjang, and vegan honey, but the menu regularly changes. The market is technically open-air, but covered and shaded for weather, and there are several tables for dine-in.
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Son Del North In places like Los Angeles, it’s much easier to find burritos without rice: Not so much in New York. Son del North opened last month, a tiny takeout counter that’s already cementing itself as a welcomed addition to New York’s burrito scene, thanks in part to its homemade Sonora-style flour tortillas. The kitchen is under the direction of Annisha Garcia, from Tijuana, Mexico, who was the 2021 Chopped Grand Champion.
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Son Del North In places like Los Angeles, it’s much easier to find burritos without rice: Not so much in New York. Son del North opened last month, a tiny takeout counter that’s already cementing itself as a welcomed addition to New York’s burrito scene, thanks in part to its homemade Sonora-style flour tortillas. The kitchen is under the direction of Annisha Garcia, from Tijuana, Mexico, who was the 2021 Chopped Grand Champion.
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Kisa, short for kisa sikdang (also spelled gisa sikdang), or “driver’s restaurant,” is an homage to Korean diners that emerged in the ’80s catering to taxi drivers. The spot echoes kisas in Korea, with vintage TVs, wall-mounted fans, Korean calendars, and a coin-slot coffee machine. There’s only one dish on the menu — it comes on a tray with seasonally-changing banchan. All there is to do is pick a main: There’s jeyuk (spicy pork); bulgogi; and jingeo bokkeum (spicy squid). The team recently added lunch and reservations.
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Il Totano The first Top Chef winner, Harold Dieterle, of the late Perilla and Kin Shop, teamed up with Alexandra Shapiro, of Flex Mussels and Hoexters, to open Il Totano, an 80-seat restaurant, hoping to capture the spirit of a 1970 Italian holiday vacation. Aged fish inspires the centerpiece of the menu and the space, which includes a dry-aging fridge in the dining room. In addition to crudo, the menu revives Perilla’s spicy duck meatballs. Don’t miss the pork cotolette, pounded thin and lightly fried, topped with bitter greens and whole anchovies.
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Cocina Consuelo What began as a pandemic supper club from the apartment of Karina Garcia and her husband, Lalo Rodriguez, is now an all-day cafe in Harlem. It is a casual space that still feels like an extension of their home right down to the piano. The breakfast here is outstanding, from the masa pancakes to its tortilla with fried eggs and hoja santa.
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Okonomi/Yuji Ramen: The diminutive hard-to-get-into Japanese restaurant anchored in Brooklyn since 2014 has popped up in Nomad through at least October 27. The restaurant is a vastly different vibe — a minimalist bright-lit narrow space with plenty of room — compared to its sibling, but it’s the same great fare. Both the daytime breakfast and nighttime ramen are available all day. Consider the five-set Japanese breakfast with tilefish, egg, and various vegetables ($25). The shoyu ramen ($18) is pretty wonderful, too. I went with tea, but Japanese beers and Dassai Blue sake from the upstate brewery are on the menu, too.
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Xiao long bao at Din Tai Fung Someone’s gotta do it: My best dish of the week comes from Din Tai Fung, the mammoth Midtown location that opened last week. Seating over 400 people at 135 tables, it’s a vast addition to city’s Taiwanese restaurant landscape. I especially loved the restaurant’s savory and delicate soup dumplings ($18 to $22), famously made with 18 folds (or 20, depending who you ask) stuffed with pork, chicken, or crab. I went to the original in Taipei in 2019 and when I tasted them a few days ago, they were like eating a memory.
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Nanchang dry rice noodles at We Noodle Some new noodles in town originated in Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi, an inland province northwest of Fujian and southwest of Shanghai: The area is known for the high quality of its rice, so don’t be surprised that this dish ($12) features delicate rice noodles slicked with sesame oil laced with ginger, garlic, and chiles. Heaped on top, there’s ground pork, roasted peanuts, and scallions, for a distinctively flavored bowl of noodles. Other characteristic Nanchang dishes found at We Noodle, just north of Baruch College in Curry Hill, include soups with beef tripe or pig intestines, and stir-fried noodles with tomatoes and eggs.
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Essential Manhattan Bakery: Orwasher’s Bakery One of the Upper East Side’s longest continually running businesses, Orwasher’s was founded by a Hungarian family in 1916. Today, it’s run by baker Keith Cohen, whose starters are spiked with different types of wine or lager. The shop is best known for its rugelach, pumpernickel bread, spelt loaves, jelly doughnuts, and black-and-white cookies, but don’t miss the sticky-bun babka, chocolate croissants, seeded bagels, glazed doughnuts, turnovers, or cherry cheese strudel — it’s some of the best in the city.
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I’m a huge fan of old-fashioned ice cream parlors with a dine-in menu and the curvy ice cream parlor chairs. Veniero’s, open since 1894, is a variation on it: long on charm, a respite from summer heat, and a fine place to order a sweet treat — perhaps in lieu of dinner. Stop in for a cannoli, a fruit tart, or a slice of Sicilian cheesecake, paired with a shot of sambuca dressed with coffee beans. The people watching here is A+. Open until 11 p.m. weekends.
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The Opening of Din Tai Fung NYC For Din Tai Fung fans, the grand opening is the restaurant event of the summer. The New York location was first announced two years ago. For some, the wait has felt longer. “We’ve been waiting for this for years,” says David Zhang, a Queens resident. There’s no shortage of soup dumplings in New York City. Lots of places serve them, from famous establishments like Joe’s Shanghai to local chains like Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao. Tell that to Din Tai Fung fans: They insist there’s something special about the ones served here. “The thinness of the soup dumplings is impeccable,” according to Zhang.
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Textbook, a Fort Greene cafe known for its tahini-coffee shakes, has opened in Bed-Stuy that’s a bakery doubling as a bar called Understudy. Fresh bread should be affordable for everyone. That’s why they have a “Name Your Price for Bread” policy. Their Chef Tony, the master baker behind Bakery by Textbook. Chef was born and raised in New York, and now calls Bushwick home. With over a decade in the industry, Chef Tony’s journey began as a dishwasher and has finally landed him the opportunity to run his own kitchen. His speciality? Bread! From working in kitchens in Italy, to building bread ovens in Morocco, he’s excited to show you everything he’s learned along the way. At Bakery by Textbook, expect a focus on Mediterranean ingredients and flavors, as Chef Tony eagerly prepares some of his favorite recipes. He can’t wait to break bread with this amazing community 💛