ANDY THOMAS LEE BIG APPLE BITES Clockwise from top left: Jazba; Arctic char with uni beurre blanc at Metropolis; dinner at Delmonico’s; Sailor Page 67, clockwise from left: a Manhattan from Metropolis; surf clam at Nōksu; Café Carmellini; Jazba’s pandi curry with oysters with Strega hollandaise or chitarra with Meyer lemon and Sicilian pistachios, before moving on to wonderful slabs of marbled meats (a gargantuan 45oz porterhouse for two, say) cooked over wood. Smoke may get in your eyes, but you’ll leave with a smile on your face. You’ll find more superb cibo and captivating cocktails over the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn, where pasta doyenne Missy Robbins and her business partner Sean Feeney have launched Misipasta (misipasta.com). This gem of a store is stacked with jars of own-label Misipasta antipasti, sauces and pantry staples, along with fresh pasta which they sell by the pound. Oh, and gorgeous gelato. Misipasta’s onsite aperitivo bar is the spot for an authentically Italian grilled artichoke sandwich or a plate of that wonderful 1980s throwback, mozzarella in carrozza. A former colleague of Robbins, the irrepressible Andrew Carmellini – they both helmed A Voce restaurants in the city – is pulling in the punters at the newly launched Fifth Avenue Hotel, on the corner of 28th Street and Fifth Avenue. Café Carmellini (cafecarmellini.com) is only a café in the sense that Le Petit Trianon was a “cottage”. In fact, it’s a grand, old New York-style dining room, where a well-dressed (and well-heeled) crowd are already piling in for gloriously grand dishes such as lobster cannelloni with golden Osetra caviar, Dover sole Normande and passion fruit chiboust, served on exquisite china atop beautifully dressed tables. Carmellini says the café is his new “culinary home”. Marie Antoinette would definitely have approved. On the subject of old New York and reinventions of its storied past, Delmonico’s (theoriginaldelmonicos.com) – said to be America’s first “fine dining” restaurant and the stuff of legend – is back in business in its original Financial District locale. This is the very place where American classics such as the Delmonico steak, lobster Newberg, and chicken à la Keene were created, and purists will be happy to see them on the menu. Apostates, on the other hand, might plump for some of the newer additions, among them black cod with kaffir lime glaze and braised octopus with a tomato agrodolce sauce. Daniel Boulud is back in the game – not that he was ever out of it – hoping to turn around the fortunes of the ground-floor restaurant at the stunning Beekman hotel in Lower Manhattan. Le Gratin (legratinnyc.com) is an atmospheric brasserie that’s all class, serving as a veritable homage to Boulud’s native Lyon, replete with beautiful, woodpanelled interior. Come here to enjoy a classic salad Lyonnaise, quenelle de brochet (a pike quenelle, emblematic of Lyon), crispy tête de veau and a cornucopia of other brasserie favourites. Enough posh nosh? Let’s hear it for the simple hamburger. Finding new tricks with beef patties is a bit like reinventing the wheel, but the owner of Hamburger America (hamburgeramerica.com) isn’t trying to. Rather, George Motz, a filmmaker and writer of several books on the hamburger, just wants to deliver the best burger going, which is why he’s only planning on selling three kinds at his new, 50-seat MacDougal Street burger bar, two of which are permanent menu fixtures and the third a monthly changing special. The choicest beef, the best buns – these burgers, says Motz, are “my love-letter to America”. American, or New American, food is also the theme at Marcus Samuelsson’s stunner of a new restaurant, Metropolis (metropolisbymarcus. com), located in the Perelman Performing Arts Center in Tribeca. No hamburgers here, as such, but instead, Arctic char with uni beurre blanc, aged Crescen Island duck, and marble mirror chocolate cake with strawberry jam. As for the interior, it revels in its disregard for economy of space, with two back-to-back extended banquettes snaking across the restaurant floor under a futuristic ceiling straight out of Star Trek. As for that tableside martini cart, all we can say is, “Beam us up, Marcus.” At Bangkok Supper Club (bangkok supperclubnyc.com), the new, younger sibling SIMON TCHOUKRIEL NetJets 69
