Tuesday night we went to dinner at a great place in Times Square (yes, there is at least one decent dining establishment near Times Square) called Szechuan Gourmet.
I learned about it from my idol, Frank Bruni, when he reviewed it for the Times, and yesterday was my second trip back. It's a medium sized place with a bunch of people always rushing around, but it usually takes around 20-30 minutes to get seated. If you're a party of 5 or more, you can make a reservation, otherwise you need to tough it out with the rest of us.
We decided to go family style, ordering szechuan pork dumplings with roasted chili soy, sliced pork belly with chili garlic soy, eggplant with garlic sauce, braised whole bass with sichuan chili miso, and crispy lamb filets with chili cumin - all to share. The pork belly arrived first, with a pile of sliced belly in a brown-tinted sauce. From the first bite, it was delicious with the slow soft burn in the back of the throat that Szechuan cooking should have, offset by the richness of the belly and the sweet-salty punch of the soy. The dumplings came next - served one atop the next in a small bowl, drenched in the fiery, sweet sauce. If you really like dumplings (and I do), you need to try these. Fried pork dumplings from the neighborhood Chinese restaurant will never seem the same. The eggplant came next and had the same effect - all of that overdone, mushy eggplant slathered in a thick, gummy brown sauce seemed so inedible compared to the soft, garlicky, tangy fire that this dish presented. The whole fish was served by a server who with three deft flicks of her wrist deboned the fish and spooned some of the bright red sauce over it. The heat of the chili did not overwhelm the delicate bass but rather enhanced it but adding the tanginess of miso and the heat of the chili. Yum. Last to come was the lamb, the dish about which Bruni raves and, thus, for which I was most excited. Unlike the other dishes we had chosen, it came without sauce, just strips of lamb that had been rubbed with a chili-cumin dry rub. My first bite was tender - the juiciness of the lamb offsetting the dryness of the rub, but it just missed the mark. It may be that I'm just not that big a fan of cumin, but it just didn't do anything for me. Too dry, earthy, thick - if you accidentally inhaled, the cumin would go running down your windpipe and you would start coughing to get it out. Despite this one flaw, it was a great meal - and one that I am very excited to have again.
Yesterday was a really interesting day in the city. NYC is still recovering from the knockout punch of that snowstorm (patches of Brooklyn were not plowed until yesterday morning), but it's fun to be out because everyone seems to be enjoying the weird weather and snowbanks, etc. and is just generally having a good time.
Although my main goal this week is to prepare for my CSET exam a week from Saturday (current reaction: ahhhhhhhhh), I wanted to get out a bit so yesterday I went to lunch at one of my favorite places: Momofuku Ssäm Bar. Ssäm Bar is part of the David Chang group of restaurants (which also includes Momofuku Noodle Bar - another favorite, Momofuku Ko - impossible to get a reservation, and Mà Pêche, which is good, but not that good) and offers a twist on Korean street food. The one thing that anyone who's been to either Noodle or Ssäm Bar will tell you is that it's not even an option not to order the pork buns. They're are a large part of what made Chang famous at the start and they are still awesome. Let me put it this way: I've eaten at Ssäm Bar and Noodle Bar a fair amount, considering they are two of my favorite restaurants, and I ALWAYS order pork buns. The bun is light and fluffy, with two hunking pieces of pork belly, two slices of cucumber, and a dash of hoisin sauce inside. Delicious. You can add some of the sriarcha sauce they give you, which adds a nice kick to the finish, but then you just gotta dig in.
One of my favorite dishes at Ssäm Bar is the short rib sandwich. It came on the menu a couple years ago and since then has changed preparations a couple times, but always remaining delicious. Right now, it's served with slices of taleggio, bacon, and a beet slaw and is unbelievable. I basically devoured it.
After lunch, I spent some time perusing the Barnes & Noble at Union Square. Did you know that they have armchairs for people to hang out on the fourth floor and read? What a great thing. At 4PM, I met my dad to go on a tour of Grand Central Terminal that we had arranged with some friends. Our guide took us all around the terminal itself and then down into the basement, where we saw the presidential train platform (cool) and the elevator that is specifically designed to fit the presidential limo that goes up from the basement into a ballroom in the Waldorf-Astoria (cooler).
Afterwards, we headed down to Colicchio & Sons for dinner - a meal which I can honestly say was a disappointment. I ate at Gramercy Tavern when Chef Colicchio was there and at Craft when he opened up his own place and can remember nothing but truly amazing meals. This, however, was a dud. And that's putting it nicely. To start, I had a raw salmon dish served with a sweet and sour soy sauce and edamame - delicious pieces of luscious, fatty salmon yet the beans really didn't work with the dish and neither did the overly salty sauce.
Then, we shared the roasted chicken, served with winter vegetables and roasted potatoes and the play on surf n' turf - a dish featuring scallops and pork belly. The chicken was good - if anything slightly overdone, but the sauce was once again oversalted.
The surf n' turf was bland and unimaginative. Imagine two seared scallops on a plate. Then imagine two pieces of pork belly next to them. Then a couple pieces of citrus fruit. And, on the side, a dollop of bacon mayo. There was no cohesion, no element or theme tying the different ingredients together and the bacon mayo tasted more of mayo than bacon.
All in all, not horrid, but not good. The meal was a huge letdown - I expected more of Chef Colicchio and the attention to detail and pursuit of perfection just wasn't there.
All in all a great couple days - and look for some photos and a review of Vinegar Hill House coming soon!
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