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Week of February 11,
2002 |
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the
underground gourmet
Goooooooooaaaaaaaal!
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Nothing against
John Madden and his Ultimate Tailgating cookbook, but
some of the most talented cooks, the Underground Gourmet
has discovered, are rabid soccer fans. Our method is to
look for an unassuming café with a group of tracksuit-wearing
men huddled around a VCR showing a foreign match, the
way you might look for a pileup of taxis outside a Pakistani
joint and wander in for a good cheap feed. The latest
example to prove this theory is Hadom, a terrific
Middle Eastern-Israeli restaurant and bar in the West
Village that replaced the short-lived Mi Va Mi last month.
Zack Cohen, who used to run Hoomoos Asli in SoHo, named
his new place for the Hebrew word for "red," which happens
to be the team color of his favorite soccer club, Tel
Aviv's Red Devils. Although the restaurant's walls aren't
painted that shade, the waitresses and the cooks wear
it, and a red rose adorns each tabletop. Despite this
obsession, Cohen pays a lot of attention to what's going
on in the kitchen. You can easily overdose on the excellent
fresh salads; hummus (the specialty of the house); and
homemade pita, or even better, malawach, the warm, buttery,
multilayered fried flatbread; not to mention condiments,
especially the bright green zhoug, the Yemenite hot sauce
that's good for dunking, smearing, and dousing everything
from the chicken soup to the falafel. Perhaps the best
way to appreciate Hadom's charms, though, is at a weekend
brunch, when the kitchen puts out first-rate renditions
of special Shabbat dishes, like a hearty cholent and jachnun
(pictured), a moist pastry dough tightly wound and served
with hard-boiled egg, puréed tomato, and zhoug. —
ROB PATRONITE
Hadom
137 Seventh Avenue South
212-206-7374
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first taste
In the Heart of Midtown
In direct contravention of Bryan
Miller's First Law of Cuisine-i.e., the food improves
in inverse proportion to a restaurant's altitude- Pulse,
recently opened to the public at the Sports Club/LA
at Rockefeller Center, offers powerhouse flavors on
the third floor, overlooking the skating rink. Working
under the management of the ubiquitous (if recently
less omnivorous) Drew Nieporent, chef Scott Barton has
fashioned a health-conscious fusion menu, with items
like sea-scallop wontons with umeboshi plum vinaigrette,
a bright and restorative roast pork tenderloin with
soba, and crunchy and perky coconut-and-cilantro-crusted
salmon with spiced tomato jam. Free with your meal:
the same view Jack Welch had from his office, without
those pesky stockholders to bother you.
Pulse
45 Rockefeller Plaza
212-218-8666
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best of the week
Mardi Gras at Café Boulud
Louisiana gumbo yaya and crawfish étouffée are the heart of chef Daniel
Boulud's special February 12 menu. But your waitress is unlikely to be
impressed if you leave a few strands of plastic beads instead of a tip.
Café Boulud
20 E. 76th Street
212-772-2600
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shopping
What a Sweet
Couple 
Before Maribel
Lieberman and Selima Salaun opened the quirky NoLIta
boutique Lunettes et Chocolat, there was (gasp!) nowhere
for nearsighted chocoholics to nibble on cognac truffles
while selecting a pair of designer eyeglasses. Now Lieberman
(pictured) has branched out with MarieBelle's Fine
Treats and Chocolates, a shop with an equally unusual
inventory: artfully packaged bars and bonbons, plus
scarves and textiles designed by Lieberman's husband,
Jacques. In this larger location, there's room for tables,
chairs, and a new cacao bar, where her signature ultracreamy
hot chocolate comes in four flavors: original Aztec,
espresso, chili-spiced, and extra-dark.
MarieBelle's Fine Treats and Chocolates
484 Broome Street
212-925-6999
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in print
Welcome
to My Kitchen
Tom Valenti has braised and roasted
his way from Alison
on Dominick to Ouest,
serving the sort of hearty, slow-cooked meals you wish
you could make at home. Thanks to his new cookbook,
Welcome to My Kitchen (HarperCollins; $29.95),
you can-while discovering along the way the chef's unabashed
passion for iceberg lettuce, white vinegar, Cuban sandwiches,
and octopus, not to mention his "love affair with bacon,"
which he consummates promiscuously throughout the book,
in recipes for everything from sea scallops to sweet-pea
stew. Along the way, Valenti dispenses helpful hints:
Don't skimp on the garlic. Disconnect the smoke detector
before attempting the charred-lamb salad. Eat risotto
from the outside in. And because "when panfrying soft-shell
crabs, things can get a little dangerous," pierce the
extremities first with a pin. He presents a convincing
argument for making your own stock (in one hour!), and
reveals something we'd suspected all along-"all bottled
waters are not created equal." He even shares the secret
of his signature lamb shanks' the "Free Bird" of his
repertoire. If everyone can make them, he must be thinking,
maybe he won't have to.
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Ask Gael
Discovered any new talent?
This
is not what we expect on lovelorn First Avenue. Our fussy
eaters warm up in romantic serenity at Lawrence Scott,
with its colorful Sol LeWitt and the command of the namesake
chef. Scott's youthful odyssey through the kitchens of
the Crillon, Lucas Carton, and Ducasse in Monte Carlo
(ended by the motorcycle crash that left him paraplegic)
shows in his tuna-carpaccio salad, in the perfect glazing
of diver scallops with Yukon Gold-potato salad, and in
his gorgeous lamb shank-moist and caramelized and wearing
radicchio feathers. At times, the kitchen is slow, and
dishes arrive cool. (It seems the sous-chef was out that
night.) The duck-confit lasagna is undisciplined but delicious,
and the deconstructed pear-and-blue-cheese salad would
be better tossed. But the pork-loin Cubano and roasted
salmon on bacon-spiked cabbage are fine. A '95 Saint-Julien
none of us ever heard of, Château Teynac, is a steal at
$35. And the trio of chocolate-ice-cream sandwiches is
just enough to share.
Lawrence Scott
1363 First Avenue, near 73rd
Street
212-396-4555
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Bites & Buzz Archive
Week of February
4
Savoia's dream team; Bid on Valentine's Day; Dim Sum Go Go celebrates
the Year of the Horse ; City Bakery's "Love Potion"; Brian McNally opts
for simplicity
Week of January
28
A Royal feast; Valentine's Day at Daniel; Le Zinc's devilish treat; Brooklyn's
answer to Balducci's; Gael's cure for the mid-winter blues
Week of January
14
Craft's new offshoot; a taste of Burgundy's best; Gael on Harlem's renaissance
and
more ...
Photos: From top to bottom- Patrik Rytikangas;
Kenneth Chen (2); Carina Salvi
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