NYC Food Guy is proud to present another great recipe from Homecookin’ contributor Spice Jonze’n. If you’d like to contribute your recipes to the site e-mail lawrence@nycfoodguy.com. Take it away Spice…
Sometimes we find inspiration from a random encounter in the streets of New York. After picking up some ipek, a dried version of the Turkish Maras pepper, at Essex Street Market in the Lower East Side, I stumbled upon SOS Chefs on Avenue B b/t 6th & 7th Street. I was immediately overwhelmed by the plethora of spices available but fortunately the helpful staff allowed me to smell anything I liked while they explained the origination and usages for each spice. I ended up walking out with cumin seeds, zataar, sumac, and fenugreek. And I knew exactly what I was going to make with them: roast chicken.
NYC Food Guy’s favorite thing about downtown Manhattan is the food, especially the cheap late night eats, which may be more satisfying than any other meal. For your viewing pleasure, I present my 4-stop cheap late night eats tour, from West Village to East Village, and everything is under $10. You’ll thank me later. Read on for the restaurant details…
It’s pretty cool being the first person to try a new drink. Thursday night at Fatty Cue, NYC Food Guy received this honor alongside Hagan the Wandering Foodie and Andy from Wined & Dined. Adam the bartender calls his $8, Thai-inspired pickle back “Tong Po,” a reference to the pony-tailed villain from the 1989 Jean-Claude Van Damme classic “Kickboxer.” And while you don’t have to coat your fist in broken glass before taking this shot, Adam’s custom made pickle juice is definitely a kick to your taste buds. First you take a shot of Mekhong, a dark Thai sugar cane spirit with a slightly smokey flavor. Then you follow it with the pickle juice giving yourself a nice kick of spice right in the back of the throat. If you actually taste it for a moment, before drowning it out with your can of Singha Thai beer, the pickle juice’s flavor is complex. Adam cooks Thai basil stems, honey, pineapple juice, vanilla bean, and assam (tamarind skin) to a simmer. Then he strains it all and purees the concoction with smoked long green Chiles, ginger, rice wine vinegar, and salt to taste. It all goes down a lot easier than you’d imagine and unlike a beating from the real Tong Po, it will have you calling for seconds. Read on to find out about Fatty Cue’s other pickle back shot and how you can get it for just $6…
NYC Food Guy always welcomes guest bloggers. Today we turn the spotlight on first time contributor, and Bronx native, Elmer The Great. E-mail lawrence@nycfoodguy.com if you’d like to contribute!
Going back to a place you haven’t been in a long time is always interesting. Going back there sober for the first time in a long time is also interesting. Will my memories live up to the current reality? Is it as good as I remember?
When I was a kid pizza was simple. There were plenty of places in my neighborhood that had good slices. Walk up to the counter, pay a dollar (boy, I’m old) and get a fresh hot slice. Sadly, many owners left, places became chain restaurants, or the pizza just turned lousy. Finding a good slice is no longer a walk down the street, it’s a quest.
During high school a friend of mine from Throgs Neck introduced me to Tommy’s Pizza. It still has an old fashioned white sign on top, a neon sign reading “Calzones” in the window, swivel stools lining the counter next to the ovens, and a few tables in the back if you’re here to stay. But you’re not here for the ambiance, you’re here for the pizza.
Like a baseball scout keeping tabs on an up-and-coming prospect, I’ve become a fried food scout. I first read about St. Anselm’s Newark Double in August 2009 and I’ve been craving it ever since. Much more than just another New Jersey sandwich overstuffed with fried food, this bad boy features two deep fried, custom made Karl Ehmer hot dogs, cornmeal-dusted fried onion and red pepper and French fries double fried in beef tallow (beef fat) vegetable oil all inside pizza bread from nearby Napoli Bakery. The dogs are spicy and flecked with visible Chile flakes. The onion and pepper are paper-thin. And the fries, cooked in the fat that made McDonald’s fries so delicious before 1990, are perfectly crisp outside and creamy inside (Note: Upon the Newark Dog’s debut, the fries were cooked in beef fat but that was outlawed by New York City’s Trans Fat laws). It’s an intimidating sandwich. I spent a few minutes holding it and repositioning before abandoning any eating strategy and just diving in, onion, pepper and French fries falling like a fried food avalanche. The toasted pizza bread is appropriately hearty to support the weight of its filling whether dry or doused in one of St. Anselm’s three housemade sauces. Sweet and spicy mustard was my favorite over thin ketchup and a spicy, smokey ketchup-based BBQ sauce. Eaten in neighboring sister bar Spuyten Duyvil’s outdoor backyard, this sandwich is a beer-drinking man’s best friend. And as far as cementing my legacy as fried food scout, like David Wright or Derek Jeter, the Newark Double is the franchise player.
Ready for dessert? Read on for chocolate truffles…
For the last year or so, the New York City pizza conversation hasn’t strayed far from the same few places, justly showering praise on pizzerias like Motorino, Co, and Veloce. What eaters have missed, however, is that Gnocco has been serving consistently delicious pies for at least 10 years. Take the Tartufata pizza ($18.95), my personal favorite at Gnocco and arguably one of the top pies in the East Village. It satisfies all the requirements of the aforementioned pies, i.e., plate-sized, thin with blistered edges and high quality ingredients. But the Tartufata’s flavor goes above and beyond. Its base is a mixture of heavy cream, pungent black truffle sauce and grated low moisture mozzarella. Shreds of speck, a smokey prosciutto, crisp to perfection in the oven alongside caramelizing slices of delicate mushroom. A drizzle of truffle oil after cooking seals in the salty, earthy flavor which combines with the charred and blistered cornicione (end crust) to provide your taste buds with a decadent experience balanced only by the light, thin crust. And when eaten in Gnocco’s airy, rustic back garden, it’s easy to forget about all those other pizzas.
It’s not often you find a place that advertises “New York’s Best” on their awning and actually backs it up. Gem Spa, the 24-hour newspaper store on the corner of St. Mark’s Place and 2nd Ave. upholds their awning’s claim of serving “New York’s Best Egg Cream.” With the near extinction of old school coffee shops and lunch counters, Gem Spa’s weathered syrup pumps and brand-less seltzer spout help create a near perfect version of this classic New York soda shop drink of yesteryear. An egg cream is composed of three ingredients (and egg is not one of them): whole milk, seltzer and chocolate or vanilla syrup. The key, and this is where Gem Spa excels, is the creation of the sweet, foamy head crowning the drink. Methods for creating this vary, but one thing remains constant: a vigorous mixing of the core ingredients with a long silver spoon. Ray, at 24-hour Ray’s Candy Store, on Avenue A and 7th Street, employs a seltzer dispensed over the back of the spoon method prior to mixing. Gem Spa just goes for the post seltzer mix. Either way, it’s a simple, refreshing and super sweet drink that reminds us food does not have to be complex to be delicious.
Dram Shop may not have the best burger in Brooklyn, but after a few beers, this double-square patty mini monster does the job. The thin, griddled patties can’t be cooked to order but all love is not lost. Lettuce, tomato, chopped onion, dill pickle slices, mayo, mustard and a squishy sesame seed bun make for the flavor profile of a gourmet Big Mac. Is the bacon overkill? Yes. But that’s why they call it food porn.
Dram Shop 339 9th St. b/t 5th & 6th Ave, Brooklyn, NY11215718-788-1444
Opening weekend at the Red Hook Ball Fields has passed which means you now have only 26 more weekends to eat some of the most authentic, fresh and cheap Central American food in New York City. But whenever you make it out there, NYC Food Guy is here to see that you make the most of your stomach space with my “best of the Ball Fields” video. After you watch, click ahead for a Red Hook Ball Fields Vendor map highlighting the best of every truck and cart in attendance.
As the popularity of food blogging and social networking collide, the World Wide Web is seeing more photos of food from all walks of life. ABC News is currently airing a story called “Food Paparazzi: It’s Their ‘Porn’”, which includes an interview with NYC Food Guy.How did it go? You’ll have to watch and see but let’s just say the title of the story includes the word “porn” because of me. Check out the video above or click this link to watch the video on ABC New’s website.
Huarache from the Martinez Truck on the corner of Clinton St. & Bay St.
It’s time, eaters. The Red Hook Food Vendors open for business tomorrow (Saturday) at 10AM. NYC Food Guy implores you to check it out for one of three reasons:
You love Central American food (Mexico, El Salvador, Dominican Republic)
You love feasting for under $20
You want a taste of NYC Food Guy’s favorite food experience in all of New York
Decisions, decisions. Let me make it easy for you. Meet me at the Ball Fields. The vendors will be there Saturdays & Sundays every weekend through Halloween.
Check out the link below for all the Red Hook Ball Field vitals:
Airy, egg-glazed buns filled with tiny chunks of sweet roast pork for just 80 cents 90 cents each? In Midtown?? How can you go wrong? Well, Ying Du’s cleanliness isn’t exactly confidence-instilling (it’s been DOH’d several times), but what can you expect from a place pulled right out of Chinatown and placed mere blocks from Penn Station? This is a rare, red-centered gem in a city where it’s hard to find anything worth eating under $1, especially above Canal Street.
Ying Du Bakery 273 W 38th St. b/t 7th & 8th St. New York, NY 10018 212-575-6978
In a phone conversation Thursday, Nick Tsoulos, owner of Patsy’s Pizza, NYC Food Guy-favorite Angelo’s Pizza and Goodburger, revealed that he will be opening Mel’s Burger Bar at 2850 Broadway b/t 110-111 Street in mid-June or early July. The menu will feature four to five burgers made of LaFrieda meat (who else?) including one on white toast inspired by Connecticut’s famous Louis’ Lunch, self proclaimed creator of the hamburger. The burgers will be flat griddled, however, so we won’t see anything resembling the Louis Lunch vertical broiling process. Though it’s called “Burger Bar,” Tsoulos said “this will not be [just] your regular burger place.” Burgers will account for “70 percent of the menu” while the rest of it will be rounded out with items such as “out of this world” baby back ribs, fresh cut French fries, spaghetti, chicken meatballs, an enchilada and other main courses and appetizers for more than just the Columbia students. The space itself will feature exposed brick and original artwork. And for those desirous of a liquid meal, you can choose spiked milkshakes or one of the 20-25 beers on draft. Based on NYC Food Guy’s love for Angelo’s pepperoni and garlic pie, I’ll definitely be giving Mel’s Burger Bar a try.
Brian De Palma has Scarface. Jimi Hendrix had “All Along the Watchtower.” And Daniel Holzman has his meatballs. Remaking a classic is never easy, but when it’s done right, it’s so sweet you forget there was ever an original version. This is the case with Holzman’s spicy pork meatballs (4 for $7) at his popular new restaurant The Meatball Shop. Just larger than golfball size, each tender meatball splits at the lightest urging of your fork revealing a juicy interior filled with pork butt and pickled cherry pepper. The latter adds a pleasingly assertive level of heat which lingers during and beyond each bite. The bright “classic” tomato sauce pairs nicely, offering a tartness that’s balanced by the use of high quality olive oil. Order the two over al dente rigatoni (plus $4) from the “Stick to your bones” section of the menu or opt for just meatballs and sauce. Either way, it’s all covered in feathers of shredded Parmigiano-Reggiano and no matter what, the best bite will be scooping up the bits of meat and tomato at the bottom of the bowl. Just like Mother intended.
The Meatball ShopWebsite 84 Stanton Street b/t Orchard St & Allen St New York, NY 10002 212-982-8895 Sun.-Wed. Noon-2AM Thurs.-Sat. Noon-4AM
Hester Street Fair opened its gates Saturday reviving a tradition of Hester Street vendors dating back to the late 1800s. And while knishes and fresh fish have been replaced by Sigmund Pretzelshop and Luke’s Lobster roll, Brooklyn-based Mile End made sure there was still some bagels and lox. Staying true to it’s melting pot roots, everything from banh mi to BBQ made an appearance and NYC Food Guy covered it all in video form. Check it out then read ahead for some news and notes plus vitals on each food vendor…
May 17, 2010 
Posted in HOMECOOKIN', Roast Chicken Spice Adventure 
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