The Breslin Bar & Dining Room
16 W. 29th St., (212) 679-1939
Her fans would recognize April Bloomfield’s distinctive cooking wherever she went, said Alan Richman in GQ.com. The Breslin is Bloomfield’s newest take on the “impassioned and embellished” British-style cooking that she trademarked at the Spotted Pig and the (now closed) John Dory. Attached to the Ace Hotel in midtown, The Breslin has helped create a new hipster scene in a “decidedly unfashionable part of Manhattan.” Bloomfield does wonders with basics. The “properly juicy” lamb burger comes with fabulous thrice-cooked potatoes that are part giant steakhouse fries, part puffy pommes soufflés. Fish fillets are both “delicate and meaty.” Soups are so intense they are “practically sauces.” The Caesar salad—usually a forgettable dish—is here given the best rendering I have ever eaten. The best bargain is the $36 pig’s foot, an “overwhelmingly rich pork meatloaf stuffed into a crunchy, crazy, hog-leg casing” that seems as if it could feed the entire restaurant. The menu does have its faults, but you will not be bored.
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Maialino
2 Lexington Ave., (212) 777-2410
Danny Meyer’s latest restaurant is billed as a Roman trattoria, said Adam Platt in New York. But all Meyer-run restaurants, no matter their cuisine, always primarily exist within the snappily sophisticated precincts of “Danny Land.” Through front door, you’ll find a “casual tavern” with finger foods like pizza bianca dusted with smoked pancetta. Once seated, you will be “swarmed by platoons of solicitous” waiters who introduce you to the quite authentically Roman menu. A bowl of chef Nick Anderer’s “wispy” stracciatella tastes like an “ethereal Mediterranean version of egg-drop soup,” and his eight pastas largely stay clear of tomato sauce, as is Roman practice. Malfatti al Maialino is a bed of eggy, hand-torn malfatti pasta covered in a creamy suckling-pig ragù. The food comes in small portions, leaving extra room for entrées, such as the “golden, lightly crusted fritto misto, or a bite or two of crackly-skinned, vinegary-sweet Pollo Alla Diavola.” Deserts are the weak spot on Maialino’s menu, though the light ricotta sformato is the “most evocative,” transporting you from Danny Land to the “sunbaked streets” of Rome itself.
Purple Yam
1314 Cortelyou Road,
Brooklyn, (718) 940-8188
After more than a decade of cooking his take on Filipino food at Cendrillon in Manhattan, Romy Dorotan and his wife, Amy Besa, moved to Brooklyn “to start again,” said Sam Sifton in The New York Times. In Ditmas Park, a neighborhood of “Victorian houses and discount stores,” they have built what seems the “perfect neighborhood restaurant.” The food has a Filipino foundation, but with accents from Asia and Europe. Popular holdovers from Cendrillon include a heavenly chicken adobo and a “faintly ridiculous wild-boar pizza.” Dorotan takes a lot of his inspiration from Korea: kimchi, “a mean bibimbap,” and a spicy tofu soup dot the menu. Try the oxtails stewed in tomatoes and peanut, avoid the pork sliders, and save room for the marvelous deserts. The very best is the halo-halo. “The Philippines’ answer to an ice cream sundae,” it features flan and purple yam ice cream layered with sweet beans, palm seeds, and different textures of coconut and jackfruit. The finished creation is both delicious and “hilarious, like an umbrella drink gone mad.”
