Eat the Week; July 15th - 19th

We cool off with cold rice noodles at Yun Nan Flavour Garden in Sunset Park | Pete Wells takes a break from the city's restaurants and writes up Hog & Hominy in Memphis | Donde Dinner? - 293 Van Brunt Street

Donde Dinner? - 293 Van Brunt Street

Donde Dinner? wants to make your next dining experience an adventure. So, every Friday, we pick a restaurant and post its address for you. The catch is, that's all the information you get. No name, no type of cuisine, and no Googling. But first, here's last week's address:

5-48 49th Ave = Casa Enrique

This week's restaurant follows typical Donde Dinner? fashion. Price, quality, and accessibility have all been taken into account. You won't be waiting at the bar for two hours with $15 cocktails and you never have to worry about a dress code. Just hop on the train, or your feet, or your bike, and head to:

293 Van Brunt Street (map)

Hog & Hominy & the Traveling Times Critic

[lance murphy for the times] andrew ticer, left, and michael hudmanFor his review this week, Pete Wells files the third installment of the Critic on the Road column. The column started in early April with Wells' dual review of Oxheart and Underbelly in Houston. San Francisco's Saison was the focus of the second COTR at the end of April and, today, Wells brings us a look at Hog & Hominy in Memphis.

The restaurant is the sophomore effort of chefs and long-time friends Michael Hudman and Andrew Ticer. "The two men bonded in sixth grade while guarding each other on the basketball court," Wells writes. "Talking outside the gym, Mr. Hudman said, each realized for the first time that he was not the only boy in Memphis who spent “crazy Italian Sundays” at his grandmother’s house eating pasta with what each was convinced had to be the world’s best sauce."

Before Hog & Hominy, Hudman and Ticer opened Michael Andrew Italian Kitchen in 2008. That restaurant "is the dutiful and responsible first born," the critic writes. "Hog & Hominy, which they built in another ranch house across the street four years later, is the scrappy younger sibling who stays up later, keeps rowdier company and gets away with things the older brother can’t." Wells enjoys most of the food at Hog & Hominy, adores the pies, and finds that the chef's second efforts have created "a more relevant and original restaurant."

This is to the credit of the chefs' humble approach to food and a synergy they've found between their past and present. "One day Mr. Ticer was talking to the head charcutier for both restaurants, Aaron Winters, about being a kid," Wells writes, "and splitting a hot dog down the middle, and arranging cheese in the crease, and then blasting it in the microwave until it puffed up and bubbled." The result? A beef hot dog on a pretzel bun with yellow mustard, aka what Wells writes is "as good an example as you’ll find of an American restaurant vastly improving something lowbrow without falling into the trap of making it highbrow."

Critic on the Road is a pleasant break from this city's tough lovin', chew-you-up-and-spit-you-out food culture. Wells clearly takes his enthusiam and passion for food with him when he leaves town, but the reviews he writes of these experiences are without the stars and what can turn into the critic's informed, make-you-or-break-you opinions. That could change should Wells write a negative review for COTR, but that doesn't seem to be the agenda. Instead, these reviews can be read as a breath of fresh air – one thousand plus words about the rest of the country; a pocket many of us New Yorkers sometimes forget about, but a chunk of geography full of food people just as passionate and smart as those doing it here. [NYTimes]

Hot Weather Calls for Cold Noodles

Cold noodles are one of our favorite things to eat when the temperature gets up around 100 degrees and Sunset Park's Yun Nan Flavour Garden (formerly known as Yun Nan Flavour Snack) is one of our favorite places to get them.

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Eat the Weeks; July 1st - July 12th

The Battersby boys are moving into 412 Court Street | Pete Wells gives a bright two-star review to Thai newcomer Uncle Boons | We ride over to David's Brisket House for some (damn good) pastrami | Pete Wells gives Wylie Dufresne's Alder two stars | The first Queens Donde Dinner? - 5-48 49th Aveneue

Donde Dinner? - 5-48 49th Ave

Donde Dinner? wants to make your next dining experience an adventure. So, every Friday, we pick a restaurant and post its address for you. The catch is, that's all the information you get. No name, no type of cuisine, and no Googling. But first, here's last week's address:

 435 Halsey Street =Saraghina

This week's restaurant follows typical Donde Dinner? fashion. Price, quality, and accessibility have all been taken into account. You won't be waiting at the bar for two hours with $15 cocktails and you never have to worry about a dress code. Just hop on the train, or your feet, or your bike, and head to:

 5-48 49th Ave (map)

Alder Your Perception

After running his Lower East Side atelier on Clinton Street for ten years, Wylie Dufresne took his talents west to Second Avenue, where he opened Alder at the end of March. You might say the restaurant is to WD-50 what The Nomad is to Eleven Madison Park, or Parm is to Torrisi. In each instance, exceptional tasting menus brought notoriety to the chef's names. Riding the success of these early prix-fixe efforts is what afforded them the opportunity to expand. Alder was a long time in the making, but Dufresne's learned, whimsical approach to cooking is no less avant garde or extraordinary in the East Village. In today's Times review, Pete Wells awards the restaurant a gracious two stars.

The critic writes, "He [Wylie Dufresne] and his colleagues at Alder (Jon Bignelli is the executive chef, leading an intensely collaborative kitchen with heavy input from Mr. Dufresne) get into your brain and rewire its pathways until you find yourself looking at one thing and tasting something else." "At Alder," Wells continues, "You will probably not mistake your spouse for a hat, but you may mistake your rye pasta for a sandwich. This is a nice, normal plate of fettuccine, except that it tastes exactly like a Katz’s pastrami on rye with mustard."

The pasta dish exemplifies what Dufresne does best – take something ordinary and serve it in an extraordinary way. At WD-50, Dufresne's eggs benedict, with suveed egg yolks and deep fried hollandaise, became an emblem of the chef's progressive cooking.

Dufresne's cooking may come off as complex, and in many ways is, but the chef has an uncanny ability to incorporate simple, everyday ingredients into his cooking. That deep fried hollandaise was coated in Thomas' English Muffin crumbs before its trip to the frier. At Alder, foie gras and watermelon are served on a Ritz cracker. "Did that bite of foie gras terrine, topped with a shiso leaf and a semicircle of yuzu-infused watermelon, really sit on a Ritz?" Wells asks. "Yes. Yes it did, and it was delightful beyond all reason."

Wells refers to the menu print as "pill bottle tiny," but advises you to "Buy reading glasses if you need to, because Alder, even with a few misfires, is an exciting restaurant." [NYTimes]

Pastrami at David's Brisket House

One of the great things about going to Bed-Stuy for pastrami is the price. David's Brisket House serves one of the best pastrami sandwiches around and it only costs $7.62 (small). The store has been open long enough to be an institution (it opened in the 70s), but unlike many of the city's shops of that nature, you can actually eat at David's and get change back when you pay with a twenty.

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