New York Restaurant Reviews – Page 13 – Writing With My Mouth Full

Pylos

128 East 7th Street between First and Avenue A
212/473.0220
$40 each for two, with drinks, without tip
♥ ♥

I’m always excited to find another Greek restaurant in the city. I was even more thrilled to try Pylos because I walked by its glass wall one night and took a note of it as a must-try when I make it back to the neighborhood. When a friend wanted to meet for dinner before heading out on a Saturday night, I suggested that we go there even though I never got a chance to look it up and read about it. I later learned that the owner partnered with Diane Kochilas, a widely recognized authority on Greek cuisine, to be the consulting chef–I now remember the cookbooks on display in the restaurant.

We started with crispy phyllo dough filled with cured beef pasturma, tomatoes and kasseri cheese. The flavor was subtle but very savory. The octopus was grilled and I couldn’t get enough of the balsamic reduction on the plate. It could have used a lot more of the sauce though, so that the octopus was a little bit more flavorful. They had ran out of the anchovies and the cabbage leaves stuffed with rice and ground beef, so we immediately moved to the main course of grilled baby lamb chops which were perfectly medium-rare and soft, served with stuffed eggplants and slivers of fingerling potatoes. The chops were so good they made up for the maitre d’ who huffed and puffed when we inquired to be seated without a reservation on a Saturday night.

We got the table next to the giant glass wall under a ceiling covered with unglazed clay pots. (Pylos stand for “things of clay”, see?) The street lamp outside illuminated our side of the restaurant and gave the front section a warm glow while the back room looked like a long dining hall. Everyone around us seemed like they’ve been going to Pylos for years since most tables were comprised of bigger groups. I’d have to come back with my own posse, but I’ve taken a more detailed note: Pylos is a nice little spot without the frills of a New York City Saturday night. It was perfect for two friends and could be perfect for a first date.

Cafe Cortadito

210 East 3rd Street between Avenue B and C
212/614.3080
$158 for 4, with drinks, with tip
♥ ♥

One of my favorite things about eating with friends? Sharing food. One of my least? Wasting food. So I was taken aback when I read the footnote on the Cafe Cortadito menu that a fee would be tacked on if main courses are split between guests. I’m not exactly sure as to why they would stop diners from sharing a dish because each one is ample for more than one. It probably made sense when they were still waiting for their liquor license, but now that you can order a pitcher of champagne sangria and a few glasses of red wine, sharing a ropa vieja with a bottle of Cab between friends just makes more sense to me.

Chef Ricardo Arias is Salvadorian, and his wife, Patricia Valencia, is from Ecuador, but you wouldn’t know any of that when you taste the Cuban-inspired food. The meat dishes were delicious; the skirt steak was well-seasoned and I couldn’t stop eating the chimichurri salsa. The oxtail braised in tomatoes and red wine reminded me of a good family meal. I didn’t finish my dish but I ate as much as I can that I had heartburn for the rest of the night. Of course, I could have skipped the maduros, or the sweet plantains, but I couldn’t help myself from ordering something else besides meat. By the end of the night, I was pining for fresh and green vegetables with a shot of whisky to push everything down.

I’m not a big fan of paying a lot of money for Latin food because I grew up in Washington Heights in New York City and was surrounded by very affordable home-cooked meals from the Caribbean and Central America. Besides, most of the Cuban restaurants I’ve tried were not even good enough to warrant a review. Cafe Cortadito changed all that: the food is simply tasty even if I couldn’t share all of it.

Related post/s:
Read about my 2003 trip to Cuba

Perilla

9 Jones Street between West 4th and Bleecker Streets
212/929.6868
$147 for three, with a bottle of wine, without tip
♥ ♥

I’ve watched Top Chef enough to know that the judges sometimes can’t make up their minds between “cooking outside the box” and “sticking with what you know”. You had Carla who finally stuck with the food most familiar to her and she made it to the final round. You had Marcel the twat who does everything Wylie Dufresne style and the judges sometimes thought it–he–was too much. But then there were episodes when the contestants were not trying hard enough or were trying too much–you just couldn’t predict what the judges were going to say next.

When Frank Bruni gave a less than stellar review to Perilla, Harold Dieterleâ€™s first restaurant, my heart went out to the first-season Top Chef winner. I can’t even imagine the anxiousness chefs feel when their new restaurant opens in New York City because one review can either make or break them. Three years later, Perilla is still in business and thankfully so because I had a very good dinner there a couple of months ago with some friends. We were looking for a low-key spot to get together and catch up with our holiday stories, particularly a small place where we didnâ€™t have to scream at each other to have a conversation. In fact, Perilla doesnâ€™t even look like it came from a TV winner. I gather that if people who have never seen the show walked in the restaurant, they would think the same way I did: Oh, this is nice and cozy and that’s about it.

I walked in and joined the standing queue at the bar one prime Saturday night. My friends joined me a few minutes after the bartender made my martini and we were soon seated right next to the kitchen entrance. I went for the sure-fire lamb while my friend ordered the fish; her fiancé, beef. A hamachi crudo was refreshing with yuzu and the notorious duck meatballs didn’t disappoint. Brussels sprouts and sunchokes are usual fare in seasonal menus and they both served their purposes well at Perilla.

The portions were larger than what I usually see in the city for the same prices, and considering I was unemployed at the time, I couldn’t complain. The food and the service matched the ambiance: nothing was overdone because everything was modest. Maybe now that chef Dieterle has made it past Bruni’s claws, he’d be willing to cook outside of his comfort zone. But you know what? Maybe I’d like for him to cook just the way he’s been cooking.

Centovini

25 West Houston Street between Greene and Mercer
212/219.2113
$196 for two, with five drinks, without tip
♥ ♥

I knew I shouldn’t have ordered the $22 glass of Barolo but the guy behind the bar gave me a taste after I picked the $16 Muraglie and convinced me that it was the better way to go. It was a very good glass of wine and I gingerly drank it with the meats and cheeses that we ordered as appetizers, as well as with the asparagus salad topped with fried duck prosciutto and egg. For $20, we had a choice of five cheeses and salumis: we split the cacciatorini, the sweet coppa, the finocchiona and the Calcagno with the Testun al Barolo. I loved the subtle spring taste of the trout main dish with the fava beans, sprouts and sweet peas; a few pieces of morels upped the price to $28.

I have walked by Centovini several times but never paid much attention to it because it looked far too dark from the outside. I thought the space would be a little too romantic to meet a friend, so I was surprised at how bright it actually was inside. We sat at the bar under the massive mirrored lamp and even felt like a surgery can be done right on the marble-top counter. The rest of the restaurant is quite handsome, with a beautiful wall of wine shelves in one end and a lounge area in another.

The service was unobtrusive because they knew to leave us alone the entire time we were there. The bartender seemed to just show up whenever we needed to refill our wine glasses. And as to not interrupt our conversation, we would nod and just give him an okay–that makes for a very hefty bill after two and a half hours.

You can still get away with a much simpler dinner–and less wine–before heading to Angelika Theater without spending too much. A three-course prix-fixe is available every night for just $38 while brunch on weekends goes for $18. Centovini isn’t Lupa but I think it’s a good spot to start the night off right. Just make sure you don’t order the Barolo.

Tsuki

1410 First Avenue between 74th and 75th Streets
212/517.6860
$105 for two, with drinks, with tip
♥ ♥

I have to be honest with you here: I’m not one hundred per cent sure I was at Tsuki. I’m pretty sure it was Tsuki because it’s one of the restaurants I have noted on my iPhone, but I have so many pending reviews I think I might have some of them mixed up. It wasn’t that the food was forgettable–as far as omakase sushi goes that won’t break the bank, the selection was pretty fresh and pretty good. There was nothing stunning about the interior because there was hardly any decor, and really, only this photo survived that night:

I’m a little embarrassed that I’m showing my age here, but I’ve racked my brain and I still can’t confirm that it’s Tsuki I’m supposed to be reviewing. Help me out and I’ll edit later, but let me continue and tell you about the place anyway.

We walked in around 930pm on a weeknight. Everyone else decided to stay indoors because it was cold out, but we were hungry after attending a retail store party with free sparkling wine. There were already two couples and a single diner sitting at the short bar, and because we always prefer to sit by the chef, we waited for our turn to sit there. Everyone left at the same time and we were able to move after only ten minutes. For the rest of the night, there were only three people with us inside: the chef, who also doubled as the dishwasher; the waitress, who could have been the chef’s wife and who also answered the phone; and a white guy in chef’s whites who returned from a food delivery but settled behind the bar after he had removed his coat.

It certainly looked like a family business with, perhaps, the white guy as an apprentice, but they seemed like they needed an extra hand or two to make things run smoothly. We ordered our sushi piece by piece from the chef because he looked like he couldn’t handle more than two orders at once. He fulfilled orders that were called in and he ran back and forth from the kitchen to get clean serving plates. Meanwhile, the waitress picked up the phone, cleared the tables and packed deliveries while also refilling our water glasses.

It took us two hours to go through a dozen sushi pieces each but we killed time by drinking Sapporo and cold sake. Although some of them fell apart while I tried to eat them, the restaurant had a varied selection that included hokigai, or red clam. The mackerel was great and the uni was fresh. After a while, eating there felt like we were in the Japanese couple’s dining room: we waited to be served; they waited for our feedback. We spoke in hushed tones and bowed every time plates were exchanged. We were comfortable and an inconvenience at the same time, staying after every guest had already left. I’m not sure if the frail couple reminded me of my parents but I felt very melancholy the whole time I was there; watching them work so hard to keep the night, and their business, alive. Sadness and sushi don’t make a good combination and maybe that’s why I’ve blocked the restaurant name out of my head.