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]

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]

Everyone Should Have an Uncle Boons

[yum kai hua pli - benjamin petit for the times]Pete Wells awards a favorable two stars to Uncle Boons this week in a review that touches on more than half the dishes on offer at the new Nolita Thai hot spot. "The owners and chefs, Ann Redding and her husband, Matt Danzer, met while working as cooks at Per Se," informs Wells, "And the marks of Thomas Keller’s ballet academy are far more visible than you’d expect at a place that plays warbly Thai covers of “Another Brick in the Wall” and “Hang On, Sloopy.”

"The electricity kept cutting out, then flicking back on a few minutes later," Wells writes of a visit to Uncle Boons, but it took nothing away from the bright flavors coaxed out of the small kitchen by Redding and Danzer. Having written a particularly food-focused review, we thought we'd give you a break down of each dish the critic mentions. So if you need help deciding what to order when you go to Uncle Boons, and you should go to Uncle Boons, let this be your guide.

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Two A's, Two T's, Two E's, One Star

One of the criteria for a New York Times restaurant review is the place in question has to have been open for three months. Theoretically, this allows the restaurant time to work out kinks and to see what works and what doesn't. Tweaks are generally made more easily at thirty-seaters versus restaurants with 150 seats that are open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And while Lafayette opened on Monday, April 15th, the solitary star from Pete Wells this week was not due to inexperience.

Andrew Carmellini is a master in the kitchen. For proof, one need only venture to Locanda Verde in Tribeca or The Dutch in SoHo, where the chef displays his proficiency in Italian and American cooking, respectively. Having worked under Gary Kunz at Laspanisse and then for Daniel Boulud for six years, Lafayette is a return to Carmellini's French roots. It shows in (most of) the food, but the restaurant falls short in execution and service.

"Nobody seems to have helped the servers pronounce simple French words on the menu. Specials weren’t mentioned until I asked," Wells writes, "And a menu change (trout in place of dorade) wasn’t disclosed until I ordered it."

"As for the food," the critic writes, "There are salads and charcuterie and oysters and shoestring fries. Almost all of it is worthy, but very little seduces you. Lafayette wants you to fall in love with it, but it tries too hard in some ways and not hard enough in others."

Single star reviews are a surprise when they're attached to ambitious restaurants run by extremely talented, respected, and established chefs. But the less than favorable reviews won't keep people out of the restaurants. If anything, they serve as a ruler and leave the staff on the receiving end with sore knuckles. Service and/or food will be improved upon, the pain will subside, and people will continue to wake up hungry. [NYTimes]

Kajitsu Takes Two

[ed lefkowicz for the nytimes] chilled eggplant at kajitsuMasato Nishihara worked at Kajitsu's East Village location for three years. He moved on somewhat recently, Ryota Ueshima took his place, and the restaurant relocated to Murray Hill. The vegetarian multicourse tradition (called kaiseki) remains, it just happens in a softer, more inviting setting. "The new place shimmers," Pete Wells writes in his review of Kajitsu this week.

Kajitsu is structured around shojin ryori, a seasonally-driven form of cooking that traces back to 13th Century Buddhist monks. Because of the Zen Buddhist belief that it is wrong to kill animals, fish included, shojin ryori is a completely vegetarian form of cooking. That aside, the ideals that drive shojin ryori are not unlike those found in the New Nordic movement, one that's given us restaurants like Aska, Acme, and Atera. At the root of each culinary practice is a strict adherence to local, seasonal ingredients.

"To express wonder that Kajitsu’s chef, Ryota Ueshima, can fashion a delicious multicourse meal out of nothing but plants and mushrooms," writes Wells, "is like being astonished when a French baker makes dessert from flour, butter, sugar and eggs."

"You could design a calendar simply by eating at Kajitsu every four weeks and taking pictures," the critic writes, then reveals the fact that Ueshima changes the menu on the first of every month. "Anticipating the season and showing off local ingredients are both old kaiseki traditions," he continues, "but I found that the things I enjoyed least at Kajitsu were Western vegetables that had not come into their own yet." These few missteps aside, Wells enjoys his meals at Kajitsu and awards the restaurant two stars. [NYTimes]

Three Stars for Three Stars and Carbone

It was no holds barred for Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi when they were developing the concept for Carbone. As Italian Americans, they wanted their third restaurant to pay homage to their heritage and the food they grew up with. In an interview for Serious Eats, Torrisi and Carbone defined the concept to the website's founder Ed Levine thusly: "We [Torrisi, Carbone, and business partner Jeff Zalaznick] say updating Italian American fine dining. If you think about it, it's hard to find fine dining that's truly Italian American, you know? And it's perplexing that in this city of all cities, with such a huge Italian American influence, there's not one bastion of that cuisine."

The early word on Carbone was a mixed bag. Some diners loved the new dining experience while others filed complaints on the food and the price they paid for it. Now that the restaurant has been open for three months, Pete Wells has filed on the mid century-inspired, Italian-American bastion.

"Carbone has a technical prowess that can make you giddy;" Wells writes, "a lust for excess that can, at times, make you a little queasy; and an instinct for sheer entertainment that makes a lot of other restaurants seem like earnest, unimaginative drones." The critic notes the over-the-top, Hollywoodesque experience. He writes, "Like Tarantino’s love letters to pulpy exploitation films, Carbone affectionately picks up the clichés of its genre, twirls them, then hurls them at your head."

At Carbone, Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi have taken a classic cuisine and made it their own, an approach to cooking they used to wow the city at Torrisi on Mulberry Street. On Thompson Street, they've done it with dishes like country ham from Kentucky and spicy chili ribs that merely wave in the general direction of the Italian pantry.

There are classic dishes on the menu whose recipes were born out of the influx of Italian immigrants to the states. Of the shrimp scampi, Wells notes, "No shrimp scampi has been handled as gently or luxuriously as Carbone’s chorus line of langoustines." There's the "$50 veal parm" too. "Served with a fried shaft of bone," writes Wells, "it’s a shock-and-awe dish, and the most shocking thing about it is that there is no real revisionism here; it is a veal parm, the way you always hoped it would be." Wells praises the efforts of Carbone, Torrisi, and Zalaznick, and awards their hot new Italian-American lovechild three stars. [NYTimes]

Dos Lugares de Tacos para Pete Wells

[yana paskova for the nytimes]Before the current barbecue craze (BrisketTown, Mighty Quinn's, Fletcher's, and Dinosaur Barbecue next month), Mexican cuisine took New York by storm. You might say it started with Alex Stupak, who opened Empellón Taqueria and Empellón Cocina less than a year apart from one another. DUMBO later welcomed Gran Electrica. John McDonald and Josh Capon (Lure Fishbar and B&B) came along and opened El Toro Blanco, and Roberto Santibañez took Fonda, his beloved Park Slope template, across the river to LES. Santibañez was also a consulting chef on the menu at Salvation Taco, April Bloomfield and Ken Friedman's latest project and another member of the new wave of Mexican restaurants to open in the past few months.

Though the joint effort at Salvation Taco wasn't enough to earn the eatery any stars from Pete Wells, who filed on that restaurant and Taqueria Tlaxcalli in the Bronx this week. Of the latter, Wells enjoys the story that's told through the food. "Mauricio Gómez founded Taqueria Tlaxcalli seven years ago," he writes, "because he was homesick for the food he had grown up with in Mexico City." That means dishes like sopes, gorditas, cactus salad, and tacos - each executed with authentic precision and a sense of pride. Wells awards one star.

Salvation Taco rings in different results. The critic is none-too-pleased with the portions, writing, "The tortillas were a little bigger than an English muffin." And he notes "those tiny portions cooled quickly." "But the things you’d hope any taqueria would nail could be dispiriting," he writes later, citing mishaps with guacamole, margaritas, and an al pastor quesadilla. Though the effort found in Bloomfield's Mexican-inspired, albeit more adventurous dishes, i.e. kimchi, pork, and hominy soup, pigs ears, and beef chili (made with various dried Mexican chilies), helped balance the missteps. But not enough for the critic to award any stars. He gives Salvation Taco the "Satisfactory" stamp.

Mexican food is a soulful cuisine. It's heart warming, rustic, flavorful, often spicy, and perhaps most importantly (or the reason it's so popular) cheap. New Yorker's can be senstive to over-priced fare of any kind, and when there are better, cheaper options to be found elsewhere in the city, as Wells finds at Taqueria Tlaxcalli in Parkchester, it makes steep price tags that much harder to swallow. [NYTimes]

The Only Stars for Beatrice Inn are Charlie Rose and Candice Bergen

[michael nagle for the times]Pete Wells files on six-month-old Beatrice Inn this week. Graydon Carter, the long-standing editor of Vanity Fair, opened the restaurant on West 12th Street in November. Carter's is also one of the minds behind Waverly Inn and Monkey Bar, restaurants Beatrice Inn borrows from in it's "stagy, raffishly exclusive neo-speakeasy" vibe (as Adam Platt refered to it in his review of Beatrice last month) and star-studded clientele (Charlie Rose and Candice Bergen were present during one of Wells' visits).

Despite its youth, the West Village eatery is on its third chef. Brian Nasworthy was there first, but he left at the end of January to work at Picholine. Calliope's Eric Korsch filled in for a few weeks, then Hillary Sterling signed on as executive chef. Sterling has Mesa Grill, Lupa, and A Voce on her resume, so the number of missteps Wells encounters are surprising.

On Sterling's menu, Wells finds goat cheese gnudi "that were bursting with the flavor of warm New York City tap water." And a strip steak that "had a chewy band of fat at its edge." There were "desperately undercooked sunchokes" and a "grainy, salty sauce of dried black olives." The critic much prefers Nasworthy's early efforts, which yielded "a horseradish-chile gastrique that had the lively hot-sweet-sour-salty tension of a Southeast Asian sauce," and mushrooms, salsify, and spinach "under a textbook hollandaise for a clever take on oysters Rockefeller." Wells awards no stars and gives Beatrice Inn the "satisfactory" stamp. [NYTimes]