Pulino's - Finally!

There's been a lot of buzz about this place.  Keith McNally's (owner and restaurateur extraordinaire of Balthazar, Odeon, Lucky Strike, Pastis, Schiller's Liquor Bar - to name a few) newest baby finally opened this month.  Eater has been tantalizing me for weeks with tiny snippets of news, updates about the status of construction, the menu, and photos of the bathroom even.  I was thrilled and surprised to be able to make a reservation for Sunday brunch very easily (12.30pm seating too!) about 2 weeks in advance, for its first week of service.  I was excited to go, mostly because of the hype.

I was a tiny bit skeptical about the food.  I enjoy going to the McNally restaurants, but, it's always more because of the scene and atmosphere than the amazingness of the food (the one exception is Balthazar's fries and beef stroganoff).  It didn't help that there didn't seem to be any overwhelming food review for Pulino's during the first few days of service either.  Nevertheless, the executive chef, Nate Appleman, seems to brought along a bit of goodwill from his days cooking in California although he still has a bit of notoriety in my mind, partly due to his armful of tats and partly due to his badass attitude in The Next Iron Chef.

I showed up for my reservation on time and relatively open-minded nonetheless.  We were seated right away once our party was complete.  The place was hopping.  There were many walk-ins who were told that the wait would be almost an hour.  Thank goodness we scored a reservation!  The interior of the restaurant is very much like Schiller's liquor bar.  There were the same white bathroom tiles, the similar bottle display.  According to one of the staff, the first level of wall-to-wall display of liquor are fake, while the rest above that are all inventoried.  So even though the display looks random, they're all been quite deliberated.

The waitstaff were all dressed in baby-blue t-shirts with police-barrier-type font printed on their front and back (can't remember what were the words).  There were a handful of picnic tables that were constructed from police barriers.  Service was really pleasant and relatively quick and attentive.

The menu gave quite a few options of eggs (on pizza, baked or on its own with sides).  There were sides and also a list of regular non-breakfast pizzas and other oven-cooked foods (roast chicken etc).  Be sure to look at all sides of the paper printed menu, we almost missed out a short list of baked goods printed right at the back.

The nutella fat baby (puff pastry stuffed with a nutella/chocolate/ganache mix) was sweet, tasty, buttery and flaky but would have been even yummier if only it was served warm.

The sable fish appetizer was a nice, light menu choice.

Grapefruit caramelized with muscovado sugar was another refreshing choice.  Although one of our two grapefruit halves turned out a little burnt (not pictured).

We also tried a salad with roasted hen-of-the-woods mushroom.  This looked run-of-the-mill but it tasted better than it looked.  The mushrooms gave a great texture and the lettuce was surprisingly buttery.

For our entrees, the first to arrive was a pasta dish (the salsiccia) that was crepe-like and layered with a very hearty and meaty ragu.  I liked this dish, it was almost lasagne-like.

Then came the pizza.  A large pie with two beautiful eggs with perfectly runny yolks.  Additional fresh cheese was grated on top.  It was really good.  The crust was so delicious!  It was crispy, very thin crust but still robust enough to hold all the hearty ingredients.  This was the winning dish for me.  I'm usually the one with a pile of pizza crust edges remaining on my plate but I actually ate all of the crust from this one!

Our final entree was the polenta and eggs.  2 eggs (cooked the way you like) over-easy served in a cast-iron skillet with creamy polenta verde (mixed with spinach I think), mushroom sauce and a spiral of spicy sausage.  I enjoyed the juicy sausage but otherwise, I thought this dish was rather meh.

Moving on to dessert.  The warm chestnut cake was definitely a treat.  It was comforting, not too sweet and definitely a flavor you grow to love more and more.

Another dessert we tried was less impressive.  It was the panacotta with burnt honey.  It came with a crisp cookie on top that had an interesting taste to it (that I can't define) but overall, the flavor was really mild and not particularly memorable.

I'm glad I finally got to try Pulino's.  Even though not every dish blew me away, I'm pretty sure I'd try to be back soon, especially for the pizzas.

A Night Out on Town in a Hurricane (sorta)

This weekend was a total washout.  There was rain, wind and some more rain.  So much rain, in fact, it almost felt tropical, short of my breath smoking up in the cold.  But a friend was in town and as our schedules were both limited, this was really the only time we could meet up.

As my friend wanted to go somewhere in the meatpacking district, and we were making reservations pretty last minute, we decided to go to an oldie  - Son Cubano.  I've been here once before many years ago and had a good experience.  I remembered that the food was good and the ambience was fun.  I was excited to try it again.

Son Cubano

405 W 14th St (between 14 St & 9th Ave)

Unfortunately, I'd say this place is now past its prime.  The music was too loud and the food too tired.  Most of the appetizers tasted pre-made / reheated.  The saving grace is a still charming interior and great service.  They also had a selection of fruit-flavored mojitos that tasted pretty good.

Pastelitos De Picadillo - puff pastry filled with cuban spiced ground sirloin beef.  This was basically ground meat sandwiched between puff pastry.  It looked great but the ground beef was bland and tasted like it had been sitting around for a while.

Cuban Bocaditos de Sandwiche Cubano - bite size cuban sandwich of roasted pork, ham, swiss cheese, and pickles.  This was again, bland.  This supposedly fail-safe sandwich lacked any real flavor.  Perhaps it had too much mild cheese and not enough salt balance with the thin slice of ham.

Calamares Fritos - flash fried, paprika dusted calamari served with lime aioli.  Again, not impressive.  Calamari was freshly-fried and reasonably tender but it was unmemorable.

Crab  Tostones Con Cangrejo - plantain cups filled with crabmeat sautéed in garlic sauce.  The plantain cups were tough and slightly rubbery.  The flavor from the crab filling was mediocre.

Pulpo Encendido - octopus cooked in spicy cuban creole sauce.   The octopus was tender but the sauce didn't really taste distinctly of anything...

Paella Valenciana - lobster tail, shrimp, scallops, mussels, chicken, and chorizo cooked with rice and saffron broth.  The paella was very soupy.  The only plus about this dish was that the seafood used in it was really fresh.

Overall, this place is definitely past its prime.  The kitchen is badly in need of some new inspiration.  The dining area could also use some volume control with its live music - a great idea but when it's too loud, it becomes unappetizing.

After the rather boring but nonetheless filling dinner, we decided to get the check at Son Cubano, take a tiny break and look for somewhere else to have dessert.  As my friend and I have Singapore as our hometown in common, we started talking about Pichet Ong (a New York dessert chef that hails from Southeast Asia).  Pichet Ong's first dessert cafe in NYC was P*Ong.  Some quick googling revealed that  P*Ong had closed and instead, a new dessert cafe was opened, called Spot.  Onward we went!

Spot
13 St Mark's Place (8th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, basement)

The selection of desserts were interesting and definitely reminiscent of Southeast Asia.  Flavors such as lychees, milo, yuzu, kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) and coconut are used.  A few choices of cold and hot beverages are also offered (including boba tea).  An interesting menu option is to select tasting plates to share among a party of 2, 3 and 4 persons.  As there were 4 of us, we went with '5 desserts for 4.'

Coconut cream with basil seeds, some type of tart-tasting sorbet and konyaku jelly.  This was my favorite.

Poached lychees with a bunch of stuff I can't recall on rice pudding.

White miso semifreddo with olive oil cake.  This was salty and sweet.  Interesting.

Yuzu-flavored frozen cream with edible 'soil.'

Milo and chocolate roulade with kabocha cream.  I thought this was the most ordinary, without much flavor enhancement from the mild kabocha.

All said, Spot is definitely a place to check out.  It has some interesting menu choices and is a great place to hang out after dinner.  There aren't enough places like this!

Has W 48th Street (btn 6th & 7th Aves) become a mini restaurant row of sorts??

Mondays - NYC Cravings food truck - taiwanese fried chicken or pork chop on rice w marinated ground pork sauce and pickles, siu mai, dumplings, rice dumplings (zhong zi).  The aroma of the marinated ground pork sauce and the fried chicken wafts through the entire perimeter of the truck; it's the best marketing tool they have!

Wednesdays - Schnitzel and Things food truck - constantly sold-out - so it must be good!

Thursdays - Wafels and Dinges food truck - belgian-style sweet waffles.  You can choose between the 'soft and chewy' style or the 'light and crispy' style.  I personally prefer the 'soft and chewy' - so much more toothsome.

All the time - Financier Patisserie - This is one heckuva wonderful pastry shoppe.  My favorites are their prepackaged almond macarons, their financier cake, the mini financier cakes that are complimentary whenever you buy a hot beverage and on Wednesdays, the heady mushroom and gruyere quiche - ooh la la!

Sunday Lunch in the East Village

I like my Sundays.  I have a routine and I thoroughly enjoy it.  I (try) to go to church.  I get my laundry done (ahh, clean clothes!) and watch Food TV while I'm waiting in between the cycles.  I grocery shop.  I make soup to last me the rest of the week.  And very often, I try out a new place for lunch that I've been reading about during the week.

This Sunday, I decided to try out the Pho Real sandwich at Sunny and Annie's Deli and for dessert, cupcakes at the Butter Lane.

Sunny and Annie's
94 Avenue B
between E 6th and 7th Streets

I've been reading about Sunny and Annie's on Yelp lately.  Almost every reviewer was raving about the Pho Real sandwich.  It was basically all the ingredients of a bowl of pho, minus the noodles and soup, in a sandwich.  The deli is located in a quiet corner of Alphabet City, right around the corner from Tompkins Square Park.  It is an unassuming deli, pretty much looks like any random bodega / deli you would walk by in Manhattan.  The sandwich counter is inside, right behind the cashier.  There are menus pasted onto the glass fronted sandwich counter and menus written on chalkboards behind the sandwich counter.  Take your time to read through them all.  The sandwiches are named after politicians etc.  Rather hilarious.

The Pho Real Sandwich is a roll layered with sliced tomatoes, cilantro, red onion, hoisin sauce, sliced avocado, raw bean sprouts, siracha chili sauce, and freshly-sliced roast beef.  The avocado was perfectly ripe, the crunchy onions and beansprouts served as a perfect foil to the richness of the avocado.  The only letdown was the roast beef.  If you order it 'hot,' it comes with a toasted roll and the roast beef is warmed up.  I was psyched to see them freshly slice the roast beef (Boar's Head) with my order, however, the heating process (microwave?) unfortunately totally overcooked the beef.  I would definitely go with the 'cold' sandwich in future.

Butter Lane
123 E 7th Street
between 1st Avenue and Avenue A

I've heard of Butter Lane before, having walked by it on E 7th Street.  However I was quick to dismiss it as yet another cupcake place.  Then when I was in Singapore earlier this February, I heard from a cousin-in-law that this place is so good she has tried every single flavor (30 or so!?).  So I decided to try it out when I'm back in New York City.  The store is tiny, pretty much a take-out place with a small counter to stand against if you really must eat in the store.  There is a board that shows all the flavors available that day.  The unique thing about Butter Lane is that you can choose whichever frosting that is available to go with whichever cupcake flavor that is available.

I'd read up a little bit on Yelp about this place and since most people seem to rave about the french vanilla frosting, I decided to try that on vanilla cupcake and because I'm such a Reese's fiend, I also decided to try the peanut butter frosting on banana cupcake.

The french vanilla frosting was wonderful.  It was almost like creme chantilly, which is simply lightly sweetened whipped cream.  In this case it was also flavored with visible flecks of vanilla bean.  This frosting was so delicate it seemed to almost begin to melt from the warmth of my hands when I handled the cupcake.  The vanilla cupcake itself was very moist and had that coarse-crumbed home-made quality.  The peanut butter frosting was a less impressive contrast to the french vanilla.  The peanut butter frosting was very sugary and not particularly memorable.  The banana cupcake was moist nonetheless and is a good base to go with another frosting.

Snackages: Camille Bloch's Ragusa (heaven in a little block)

I first came across these delectable little confections at an airport Dutyfree last year, during my layover in Frankfurt, enroute back to New York from Singapore.  I always enjoy checking out foods in different countries because, well, I'm always hungry firstly and am looking for something to eat but also secondly, I love discovering new varieties of foods and being able to say "Hey! I've never seen that before!"

So I was browsing away at Frankfurt airport's Dutyfree, through their candy section, when I noticed the bright orange-colored box.  The packaging looked somewhat familiar but I had certainly never eaten the product before.  Perhaps the shade of orange reminded me too much of Reese's, another passion of mine, but I digress.  There was a small picture of a hazelnut on the box and the large words 'RAGUSA' emblazoned across.  I decided to try it out and bought 1 box.  There began my greatest new-product discovery and biggest regret thus far.

Ragusa is delicious!!!  The box I purchased revealed batons of individually gold foil-wrapped pieces.  The contents are rightly described as 'confections' since they weren't entirely made of chocolate.  And that wasn't even a bad thing!  They were everything I looked for in a a candy bar.  Ragusa is basically a thick layer of a hazelnut/chocolate-flavored, ganache-like filling (tasting very much like Nutella but less viscous), encompassing large, crunchy pieces of whole hazelnuts, and the entire thing is enrobed in a thin layer of milk chocolate.  When you bite into a piece, it is creamy, rich and very satisfying.

I've since gone through quite a few packs of these chocolates - hence the 'regret'.  To-date, I have found that the 50g multipack is the best rendition as it stores better (the individually-packed bite sizes).  The 100g Jubile is messier to handle in comparison but of course still as delicious.  I've yet to try the Delice but I can only imagine those little suckers would be as highly addictive as the multipack.  Ragusa also comes in a dark chocolate version, which I haven't tried as I prefer milk chocolate.

So far, I haven't really found Ragusa in Manhattan.  As a result, I've only managed to purchase Ragusa when I am transiting via Frankfurt or online at Swissmade.com (other websites constantly show that it is out-of-stock).  Unfortunately, due to my US location, it is very expensive to buy them from Swissmade as they are shipped from Europe, the 5-pack cost me about $35 all-in when the products themselves cost only $15.  As a result, I've resorted to stocking up on Ragusa big time when I am in Frankfurt.  The last time I was there, I bought 7 boxes.  I was going to buy 10 but I felt a little embarrassed to reveal my gluttony to my boyfriend who was with me - which I really shouldn't have now in hindsight since I'm certain this stash will not last me until my next trip to Singapore, and he is suppose to love me through thick, thin and candy obsessions, no?

Snackages: Yoku Moku Billet

I first sampled Yoku Moku's delectable butter cookies when I was in my late teens / early twenties and holidaying in Singapore.  A good friend of mine, who was going to college in LA at that time, used to give me a box of those cookies as my Christmas present whenever we met up back in Singapore during our respective year-end school vacations.

Buttery and decadent in its ingredients and mouth-feel, these little cookies also fall into the 'light snack' category for me due to their cute, bite-sized portions and elegant individual wrapping.  Oh to tear open one of these smooth little plastic packets, pop a whole biscuit into my mouth, and gently crunch into its deliciousness, is certainly a much anticipated perk to my day.

There is a variety to choose from but the most popular are their butter cookies that are so thinly-made they are only slightly thicker than a crepe.  These butter cookies are available most commonly as a Cigare (rolled into a cylinder and lightly smeared with chocolate on the inside) or as a Billet (flat cookies folded in half with sliced almonds and sandwiched with a light smear of chocolate).

The cookie I have featured on this post is the Billet aux Amandes Chocolat, which is a butter cookie, folded in half, lightly smeared with milk chocolate on the inside and topped with sliced almonds on top.  YUM!

I obtained my most recent stash from Neiman Marcus when I visited the afore-mentioned good friend of mine in LA (now a mother of one) early this January.  However Yoku Moku is available in stores around the world (NYC: Bergdorf Goodman and Takashimaya on 5th Avenue) or on online on Amazon.