Places to be Curious About

[backyardchef]

One of the most expected and still disappointing reviews I have read recently. 

"Maybe it’s the lack of heat: La Boca is beautiful, and expensive, and charismatic, but it is also very bad."

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-food-scene/la-boca-is-all-smoke-no-fire

Edited November 10, 2025 by backyardchef

[small h]

It did make me want to hang out there and not eat, though.

[Wilfrid]

Plenty of laughs there, as long as you're not Mallmann (or his executive chef).

relieved, to at last find something at La Boca that was straightforwardly unobjectionable...I started to laugh, and then nearly aspirated my bite of meat and choked to death, though I can’t fault the restaurant for that.

[Orik]

The frog club of open fire cooking restaurants 

I bought the cookbook after reading the review and I can't imagine someone reading it and going "yes, these very simple recipes highly dependent on just the right ingredients and cooking method will surely work without them" 

[backyardchef]

Whenever I see Mallman cook I always wonder how many wildfires he started...

[small h]

Not that curious, ‘cause it’s pretty clear what’s going on. But the Top Hops transition is complete.

[Wilfrid]

I am surprised the last day was 10/13 as I thought I had visited more recently. I often stopped for a cider after visiting Formaggio (cider, you see, is okay for daytime drinking as it's really a kind of fruit juice).

[small h]

10 minutes ago, Wilfrid said:

cider, you see, is okay for daytime drinking as it's really a kind of fruit juice

See also: Bloody Marys, because they are so healthy and full of produce.

[Wilfrid]

Wise advice, although personally I dislike tomato juice.

[MitchW]

I think this is Matthew Schneier's best (double) review yet; in it, he reviews both Saga and Cove (fwiw, I did have an early reservation at Cove, and decided I wasn't going to like it, so it was canceled).

I did think of Sneakeater after reading the review, as he and I often agreed that we like entrêes more than bites (as well as not liking share plates - or sharing, for that matter).

Bites on Parade - Cove and Saga revel in the hushed seriousness of the tasting menu. And they’re stymied by the worn-out format.

Quote

 McGarry may have picked up his hay-smoking technique for his pièce-de-resistance squab working in a restaurant in Belgium, but his bird — already a hard sell for any pigeon-wary New Yorkers — put me in mind more of the animal’s essential animalness than I’d have liked. It came with bitter lettuces dressed with squab vinaigrette and a mushroom fricassee scattered with chips of dehydrated squab jus. By the time the curious desserts started arriving — parsley-and-gooseberry granita with rose-scented cream, an apple mille-feuille whose pastry had been swapped for cinnamon-toast tofu skin — we were exhausted.

As an aside, I had hay-smoked duck some 20 years ago in Paris, probably just about when McGarry started cooking at home - at age 3.

Quote

why did Saga leave me wanting more? If I wish McGarry were a little more intent on the whims of his customers, I wish Mitchell were a little less. His cooking is so much more interesting than the tired playbook of tasting-menu voluptuousness dictates. It’s a snappy and fabulous sally to open a menu with cornbread, in the form of a scallop-edged tartlet, a fine confit of chicken in its golden heart. It’s dutiful, and a little boring, to then spackle it with caviar.

His fried fish has been so upscaled — Japanese madai, tempura-fried, dusted with dehydrated hot-sauce powder — that it seems like a ghostly shadow of itself, neither salty nor spicy enough. And (to paraphrase the old joke) such small portions.

As an(other) aside, wasn't Wylie doing tempura-fried dogfish, and dusitng it with dehydrated vinegar, at the late, lamented Alder?

Edited February 9 by MitchW

[rozrapp]

9 hours ago, MitchW said:

As an aside, I had hay-smoked duck some 20 years ago in Paris, probably just about when McGarry started cooking at home - at age 3.

Gabriel Kreuther is known for his two-week aged, hay-smoked duck breast. Checked my photos and found we had it as part of a tasting menu in June 2019. 

[Steve R.]

Not a place to be curious about but...

https://www.brooklynpaper.com/feltman-worlds-first-hot-dog-michael-quinn/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=bkp-pm&utm_term=Brooklyn Daily Newsletter

Just want to make sure that Orik/Sivan see this.

[Wilfrid]

The Golden Steer.  For all my trips to Vegas, I had never heard of this place. But then, I wasn't really looking for steakhouses for dinner. Dates from 1958, apparently.

What makes me curious is that it has opened in that very familiar and distinctive space that once housed Otto. I have spent some time in there over the years, although I didn't go to the Forgione restaurant that closed last year.

[MitchW]

You had to go off-strip (though not that far) for the Golden Steer.  On our past trips to Vegas, we liked to head up towards Fremont Street (pre-experience) and another great steak house, Hugo's Cellar. And - gambling up there was less expensive, though nothing beat a place we'd frequent on the east side of town, on Boulder Highway.

[Evelyn]

Golden Steer just remodeled and expanded their space. It is a tourist trap. Plenty of better places for steak in LV.

[Evelyn]

Hugo’s is on the “better ones”.

[MitchW]

3 hours ago, Evelyn said:

Hugo’s is on the “better ones”.

We've definitely had some good times there!

[Wilfrid]

I am so totally out of touch with New York dining, especially compared with how obsessively followed it for so many years.

Walking around downtown today after hiding from the rain yesterday, I walk past The Fulton at Pier 17 and then take some coffee opposite a little place called Le Gratin. Well, it looks little from where I am.

Googling, I discover that these are Vongerichten and Boulud places respectively and that Le Gratin is actually a grand space inside the Beekman Hotel.

I was completely oblivious to them. Consistently with that, the next four restaurant reservations I am holding are for St Louis.

[Steve R.]

We've been to Le Gratin and are actually going back in a couple of weeks.  One of only a few "Lyon-ish" places in NYC. As nice as the space is, try going to the rest room.  You'll need to go thru the adjacent main hotel restaurant ("Temple Court", a Tom Colicchio place), in a much larger, more opulent space.  

[MitchW]

12 hours ago, Steve R. said:

We've been to Le Gratin and are actually going back in a couple of weeks.  One of only a few "Lyon-ish" places in NYC. As nice as the space is, try going to the rest room.  You'll need to go thru the adjacent main hotel restaurant ("Temple Court", a Tom Colicchio place), in a much larger, more opulent space.  

I forget, but it was at least one other restaurant (maybe even two?) before Le Gratin, that we actually enjoyed.

Adding - it was a McNally restaurant that I'm remembering.

Edited April 27 by MitchW

[GerryOlds2TheReturnofGerry]

7 hours ago, MitchW said:

I forget, but it was at least one other restaurant (maybe even two?) before Le Gratin, that we actually enjoyed.

Adding - it was a McNally restaurant that I'm remembering.

Augustine. Good burger and French onion soup.

[small h]

2 hours ago, GerryOlds2TheReturnofGerry said:

Augustine. Good burger and French onion soup.

Oh! I had Christmas Eve dinner there once. The gougeres were lovely. And I think it's the first place I had amaro montenegro Also, I randomly ran into friends from LA, what are the odds.

[rozrapp]

Michael and I loved Augustine. Had many meals there both lunch and dinner the entire time it was open.  During the last few years, Markus Glocker became chef/consultant (while still at Batard). He added several truly enjoyable Austrian dishes to the menu.

[MitchW]

A really bad picture:

Because I didn't want to sleep with the fishes.  But it's DeNiro having dinner with Pesci, at Augustine!

Adding the date:  February 11, 2017

Edited April 28 by MitchW