https://www.instagram.com/p/C8AuFBCyiNo/

That's a quick couple of slices I had a while ago.  They know what they're doing...

No smoke signals!

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The New York location will be one of three Cafe Bouluds, with others in Palm Beach, Toronto, and the Bahamas

haven’t been.   Haven’t heard anything. But hopefully will go soon.  

But...wow...she pulled it off, and most everything was delicious.  Of course, some props must go to Roscioli as well, and when Roscioli's owner got up to tell a little bit about the evening, he did mention he was working with the best second best restaurant in Rome.

We started with bread and two olive oils - now I think this bread may be Roscioli's standard bread service, but boy, did it ever remind of early day Lupa's great focaccia.

The oil on the left from Puglia, and on the right, from Sicilia. So dfferent, plenty good...Puglia's is nice and spicy, if that's your thing.

First course was two different plates; here's one of them:

Jerusalem artichokes, with sunflower seeds, bitter olives and steamed greens (interestingly, baby bok choy - Roscioli is fairly close to Chinatown). The other plate was grilled radicchio, over a goat cheese and lemon sauce.  Not a beauty to photograph, but tasty nonetheless.

Second course was a knockout, and I'm certain I had something similar at Sarah's original Santa Palato:

Trippa alla Cacciatora - honeycomb tripe, so tender it melts in the mouth.  Rich, and I mean rich, (not that @rich) sauce.

And then the pasta - this was classic. And from our seats, we could see her trying to show everyone cooking how to make this properly:

Carbonara.  No need to say anything more- it was a properly portioned (like from the old days - having a real Italian meal), pasta dish. One of the four classic Roman pasta dishes.

Next up, braised lamb shoulder over (once again, an interesting choice for a Roman restaurant) fregola. (Okay, fregola is a Sardinian toasted pasta, usually, but not always, served in soups, or with a saucy seafood thing). How I would have preferred scottadito, or roasted lamb shoulder as they might do in Rome, will remain my own opinion (I would have). But I understand the logistics of such a dish, served as the secondo to 75 or more diners.

A lovely chocolate (& miso) tart followed.

There was a a wine pairing offered, and it might have been the way to go, yet we (I) demurred) - we ordered a bottle to start, and followed with two glasses for the secondo.  Host/somm/maître were all so nice, they poured each of us the dessert wine (so I guess that's a COMP DISCLOSURE).

To recap - we had a really good time.

We may even head back to Roscioli NYC to enjoy an à la carte dinner sometime soon.  

P.S. That trippa at the OG Santo Palato (02/2018)

Might've even been better there!  

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Le B. is taking over Mar’s Les Trois Chevaux space in the West Village—the French fine-dining restaurant will reopen in a new space uptown later this year or early next—with a whole new “sleek and sexy,” vibe Mar says.

More on Le B. here.

I started with The Pickle - cornichon gin, giardino secco, centerbe, patino’s pickle bitters. Which is a lot of words to say "gussied-up dirty martini." It was very good, but it also felt a bit too refined for me. I was hoping for a crazy amount of garnishes, not just an austere black olive and a cornichon.

Next, the grilled mushrooms with fried egg and crispy buckwheat. I loved this. So much variety in texture that every bite felt like a new dish. It was, however, extremely rich, and I tapped out halfway through and traded the rest for some standard-issue scallop ceviche.

And then the bucatini pomodoro, which was a fail. The pasta was overcooked and sticky, the sauce tasted tired and flat, and it was oversalted. Look at that sad piece of basil. I barely made a dent in it.

I tried to put things back in the plus column with a sticky toffee pudding, but alas, it was just okay. Nowhere near Dame's version, or the ones I had in Scotland. Oh, well. Pear sorbet felt like an odd choice, but that muscovado sugar crumble made a nice bookend to the kasha.

Why so much goddamn salt?  Is anyone teaching cooks how to salt properly any more?

The other night, I watched as a cook salted my app before it got served to me - I wanted to scream, yo - enough!  And there's already salt in the food for sure, so putting another teaspoon atop doesn't really make it better.

But we have had two meals since the beginning of the year that I feel are worth mentioning, because the salt levels were proper. At both Ci Siamo and Via Carota, we had lovely food, and I wasn't up all night drinking water.  Interestingly, both are places where the chef is a woman or women, and let's just say, of a certain age. 

It's larger inside than I expected, with a long and very comfortable bar. I did make a reservation and when I first walked in I thought I needn't have bothered; but the place filled up fast. The "wet martini" features gin, Dolin dry vermouth, Comoz Blanc (another vermouth) and orange bitters. It was good with the gildas, made here with pickled cucumber instead of the traditional pepper plus big, fat olives.

I wasn't sure about the cara caras with Murcian goat cheese, but I'm glad I tried the dish. The cara cara is a red-fleshed orange but not a blood orange (per Wikipedia). The pieces were dusted with sea salt and served alongside the creamy cheese, over a dressing made with good vinegar. Interesting and thoughtful although the portion of oranges was unnecessarily generous. Like most NYC tapas, really a plate for sharing.

Then the ambitious burger. A medium rare but crisply charred patty served with Roquefort (now over $50 per lb at Formaggio, incidentally), a couple of boquerones and a mound of thinly sliced raw onion. Boquerones do enhance red meat, but I had to remove most of the onions. Otherwise very good. I moved from the martini to a Catalunyan orange.

Intriguing food, delightful service, nice room.

sea scallops - buttermilk, cucumber, coral on toast - super-fresh seafood, and the coral tasted like a dream.

kangaroo tartare - warm spices, charred eggplant, sardinian flatbread - hubby thought it was pretty good. we loved that it was chunky and had texture and that it was not a smooth paste. the flatbread overpowered the tartare though, and we concluded that eating the meat by itself was the way to go.

cucumber and melon salad - this was just ok; it didn’t really grab us. but i did appreciate the combination. 

boer goat - the other superstar was the goat which was cooked low and slow and served with a tomato saffron sauce, new potatoes and cilantro. we thought this was awesome; that the smoking process lent a nice char on the exterior and moisture on the inside, and that it was not stringy as goat can oftentimes be.

there are lots of seriously interesting potables on their list, especially the sherries and orange wines.

I suppose passing through Times Square might resembled "running the gantlet" if you're writing for a non-New York audience.

"(L)ocate the lonesome check-in desk on the third floor, you’re escorted to a rotunda of elevators and sent rocketing up the atrium..." There may not be many revolving restaurants in the city, but there are countless high up and rooftop restaurants and bars such that the elevator experience is absolutely not worthy of comment.

"(T)hen sunset’s long orange smear, blue night massing like a thunderhead, and all the buildings coming on like constellations." I think leave that stuff to Hart Crane. Me, I had to google "thunderhead," apparently a specific form of cumulonimbus.

"(C)reamy-yolked quail eggs, juice bombs of cherry tomatoes..." Useful for those readers unfamiliar with eggs or tomatoes.

"(S)hrimp cocktail, nicely plumped..." How do you "plump" a shrimp cocktail. How do you even plump an individual shrimp. (Eww.)

"(Y)ielding carrots..." Not the chewy kind.

"(F)ries — crispy, salty, keeping you reaching back in..." Not the soggy, unseasoned kind, and yes you can have second helpings.

"When a tequila order went awry, no fewer than three people mobilized to solve the issue, returning every few minutes with updates until the amended drink was in hand." Three people and constant updates; perfect.

"You can taste your heart in your mouth." Unexpected addition to the menu.

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Now, there are big changes afoot at Babbo. Bastianich, who’s maintained ownership of the restaurant with his mother Lidia and sister Tanya since Batali divested his share in 2019, has agreed to sell Babbo and Lupa to Stephen Starr’s restaurant group, according to people familiar with the deal. The Babbo redux will also mark the return of chef Mark Ladner, who was part of the original kitchen team when the restaurant opened and went on to open Lupa and Del Posto.

Grub Street - https://www.grubstreet.com/article/stephen-starr-babbo-lupa-mark-ladner.html

This is very precise cooking supported by excellent service. It comes at a price, and a higher one than I expected. As ever, two people splitting a bottle of wine might get off more lightly than one person ordering by the glass. I did have four courses, and the cheeses are much more expensive than the desserts.

$116 for food, $76 for drinks. And an espresso.

The menu is a lesson in regional Indian food and the creative possibilities contained within it. It defies preconception or oversimplification, neither strictly traditional nor fusion. Mr. Khanna makes a version of galouti kebab, a silky-on-the-inside, crisp-on-the-outside patty from the northern city Lucknow. But he subs out the traditional mutton filling with mashed kidney beans, stuffs them between two slices of fried lotus root and serves it all atop walnut-radish raita. Think Oreo in structure, with an uncanny depth of flavor.

Bungalow’s ghee roast, a dish in which meat is typically cooked in fat until meltingly tender, is built around plantains, enhancing their richness and sweetness. The peels are turned into a smooth, tangy ketchup that sings. Strained yogurt encased in shreds of kataifi and deep-fried — Mr. Khanna compared the technique to frying ice cream in dough — is unexpectedly, and pleasantly, as sweet as it is savory.

The best Cuban food I've ever had.

Went to the Foul Witch x Danny Bowien pop-up last Friday and found it kind of hot and cold (but not in a good way like Mirarchi's fire & ice straciatella/nduja dish). Most of the menu was Bowien's (he seemed to be the one running the kitchen for the night), with a few FW dishes thrown in the mix. Best were probably sweetbreads with white pepper and lime, just really nicely balanced, and the fry was light and greaseless. Both large-format entrees were kind of a letdown: an otherwise very tasty dry-aged lamb saddle that was unfortunately mostly fat, and a yellowfin tuna collar that was overpoweringly oily and fishy in a way that needed the accompanying chili and scallion condiments (which were delicious) to make it more palatable. The one straightforward Italian dish we had, a celery salad with anchovies and cave-aged pecorino, was fine. I would maybe be interested in trying more of the regular FW menu, but my table walked away kind of underwhelmed.

Has anyone been for the regular menu?

It's brief, it's in a "newsletter" and here it is:

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★

By Ryan Sutton

“In the Beginning Henri Soulé begat Le Pavillon and La Côte Basque,” The Times’s restaurant critic Craig Claiborne wrote in 1969, channeling the Old Testament to trace the evolution of our city’s fine-dining scene. More than 50 years later, his sentiments still feel relevant, especially since the old Le’s and La’s laid the foundations for a buzzy newcomer: Cody Pruitt’s Chateau Royale. The Libertine sequel is an enjoyable, if rather rich ode to a bygone era of New York French dining.

Get your high-acid small plates elsewhere. An edgy neo-bistro, this is not.

At this Greenwich Village carriage house, replete with red banquettes and white tablecloths, a dressy crowd knocks back martinis as strong as lighter fluid. And the chef Brian Young channels the ancien régime with cream, foie gras and Dover sole à la Grenouille. He digs up a recipe for lobster thermidor, and the delicate shellfish suffocates in melted Gruyère. He makes a chicken cordon blue that, when cut, spills out Comté like a lava cake.

 

A gumball-size beggar’s purse (at $39) hails from Mr. Young’s old stomping grounds, the Quilted Giraffe. Though it tastes more of crème fraîche than caviar. Better are silky coins of raw Hokkaido scallop, a blank canvas for miso brown butter. And chilled blue prawns pack a creaminess that’s closer to sashimi than shrimp cocktail.

Mr. Young ages his duck a l’orange until it takes on a deep earthiness; a bergamot-laced sauce tames the funk. And sablefish recalls the sweetness of Nobu’s black cod and the lushness of Wagyu, though a caviar beurre blanc doubles down on fatty opulence. Finish off with molten chocolate cake, that old Jean-Georges Vongerichten staple, and feel the cocktail cart trundle by like the subway — the eternal soundtrack of the city.

Address: 205 Thompson Street (Bleecker Street), Greenwich Village; no phone; chateauroyalenyc.com

Recommended Dishes: Hokkaido scallop grenobloise, blue prawns with Espelette aioli, foie gras au torchon, sable with caviar beurre blanc, koshihikari rice pilaf, and lemon tart.

Price: $$$

Wheelchair Access: The entrance is on the ground floor, but the formal dining room is up a steep set of stairs. There is no elevator, but the upstairs menu can be ordered downstairs.

 

Thankfully, he didn't like it as much as we didn't. 

Especially inviting is when your meal starts off with the host mentioning that:  "We'd like you to know - you have 90 minutes to enjoy your experience."  Hospitality at its finest!!

OK, douches, then don't make us wait for our drinks for 1/3 of that amount of time, since I don't order food till I've had a cocktail.

Barry Okun 1957-2025

I lost one of my dearest friends - my New York family - yesterday, although many of you know that I’ve been losing him for weeks and months. Barry Okun lost his battle with cancer yesterday afternoon. 

I met Barry when I was 23 years old. We met on an online food board, back in the days where every niche interest had an entire community participating in an online message board. The early days of egullet were crazy, with now famous chefs participating in highly contentious conversations about the best taco in NY, the best way to roast a chicken, and where to find a mythical possibly imaginary arepa lady under a bridge in queens. Even among a group of talented, opinionated and highly vocal people, Barry’s voice and incredible writing stood out. 

Eventually we met in person, at WD-50, where we had our first of thousands of meals together. I learned that Barry was an autodidact, a brilliant lawyer (who truly hated that job), a wearer of fedoras, and equally knowledgeable about theater, history, literature, music, NY, and pretty much everything as he was about food. He was also a widower who had lost his soulmate in Judy Fell and was trying desperately to find any path forward without her. 

From that night forward, in 2003 or so, Barry sheparded me through life in NY. He taught me to know and understand wine and booze, and we were part of an extraordinary emergence of the cocktail scene in NY. Barry was a proper diner, who started every meal with a cocktail and followed with an appetizer, main course and dessert, with a bottle of white, followed by a bottle of red. The bottles were always extraordinary and generally old world except for Pinot and a lot of Abe Schoener’s early wine experiments. On we went, eating at restaurants, writing about them, traveling the world and learning about food. Barry guided my knowledge, and despite having 24 years on me, he was always up for an outer borough trek and a conversation on any topic (I was finishing law school and he could speak about any legal topic with brilliance). We knew and wrote about chefs as they emerged: Wylie Dufresne, David Chang, Dan Barber, Suvir Saran, Dave Santos to name a few. These chefs knew us by our screen names and loved us or hated us and sent us dishes to try and give feedback on. It was a time that can never be recreated, that is hard to describe, and that Barry would do far more justice to write about. 

Decades passed in which we traveled to Philly and Piedmont and Kansas City, saw hundreds of plays - all of them weird as he preferred it and referencing things I didn’t yet know, covered every topic from esoteric Jewish doctrine to wine education, and became truly the closest of friends. Barry mingled into my friend group with ease because he knew a phd level amount about everything, but especially about music, literature, food, and drink. He was ornery, opinionated, and often difficult. He introduced me to Jeanie, who is one of my closest friends, because we were “two outspoken women who need to know each other.” Barry and I spoke every day from the time I was 23 to earlier this week when his last words to me were “can you come back later.” For the last few weeks, I sat by his bedside in the truly miraculous place that is Mount Sinai palliative care reading to him from Dante’s Purgatorio, which was the last book he was reading and not quite finished with. I think he knew how it ended. 

During the pandemic, we cooked virtually together every day, along with our friend Mitch, inspiring each other and trying to stay sane but mostly failing to overcome our neuroses, especially in combination. The meals we made were beautiful. Our sourcing was featured by Pete Wells in the New York Times. No topic was off limits and since 2020 we have sent thousands of texts on every topic. Nothing hurt more than when Barry stopped texting. I am heartbroken for so many reasons, but I will miss tapping into his endless intellect and knowledge the most. Losing Barry is like losing Ratners and Lespinasse and the original Second Avenue Deli, knowledgeable cab drivers that don’t use GPS, the old Essex market, the right to own our own bodies, quality journalism, and rule of law. We will never be the same. Those who did not know Barry will hardly believe this mythical creature might have existed.

He wanted nothing to do with religion (no shiva for sure), but he was as Jewish as they come; one of many unresolved contradictions that were Barry. His bookshelves are filled with Spinoza and Maimonides, resting comfortably near Das Kapital (the new translation by Paul Reitter that he was desperate to live to read), art books from all the latest shows, Superman comics, and a perfect box set of Jane Austen. He was raised on Long Island a d spent most of his adulthood in Prospect Heights, but he knew every corner of New York City and all its history and culture. He saw a play or music almost every night of the last two decades, although he was critical of much of what was produced and everything commercial. Although he dated many a beautiful (very) young woman, he loved Judy with all his heart and spoke of her always with reverence. In recent months he watched me fall in love, and made room in his often cynical heart to celebrate that.

We loved to say that we met on the internet and nothing more, but there is so much more to be said. For me, for him, please raise a glass of extraordinary wine to the extraordinary man. There will never be another like Barry Okun and we shall never be the same.

I have never been to the Paris location, sadly, although I often re-read Aboyneau's book, French Bistro.

I understand I am really setting myself up for disappointment here (but at least the price is fair).

Is there anywhere in NYC serving a good selection of really good oysters?

Waited 45 minutes before opening to get a walk-in seat. Probably won't go back unless getting a reservation becomes a little easier.