2008 may have brought some sad news on many fronts, but it also held some culinary developments well worth remembering. Now, the year’s best:

1. Best Excuse to Eat Eye-Popping Amounts of Pork: The annual metzgete pork-a-palooza at Trestle on Tenth. We first wrote about this pig fest last January, when Swiss bistro Trestle on Tenth offered its take on the Alpine Swiss winter tradition that uses every last bit of the pig following the season’s slaughter. A year later, we are still dreaming about the “home-made bratwurst, liver sausage and tumescent, Dirk Diggler-esque blood sausage, all piled high atop mountains of sauerkraut and mashed potatoes and covered with slabs of slow-braised and fat-stippled pork belly.” No news yet on whether Trestle chef Ralf Kuettel intends to make the metzgete an annual tradition at the restaurant, but if he does, we call dibs on the squeak.

2. Best Cold Weather Antidote: A bowl of the Shiromaru Classic tonkotsu ramen at Ippudo. Ippudo has become somewhat of a fixture on the burgeoning New York ramen scene since we reviewed its opening in March. At the time, we called this light, soy-flavored broth, boiled with pork bones and seasonings for fifteen hours, “a contender for the most sophisticated bowl of noodles in the city.” Ippudo’s loyal, predominantly Japanese crowds show we weren’t the only ones who saw the beauty in their broth.

3. Most Appetizing New Use for The Bread of Affliction: Vosges Haut-Chocolat’s chocolate-covered matzoh. Not very much can make a holiday all about austerity enjoyable, but Vosges manages the job admirably, adding a treat to the Passover arsenal that we would happily eat any time of year.

4. Website Most Likely to Make You Question Your Ability to Use Frosting: Cake Wrecks. We described the site in October as “an online rogues gallery of bakery disasters,” and as its popularity increases exponentially by the week, the cakes get more and more tragic. A friend of ours wrote in to tell us that she “laughed so hard looking at Cakewrecks that my landlady’s daughter, who lives below me, called to ask if I could please get a grip on myself so she could get some sleep.” We would love to see a dream team pairing of Cake Wrecks and the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players–just imagine the results: songs like “Hapy Brtdae” and “Sexual Harassment: NO!”

5. Best New Excuse to Walk West: Nova Café’s Croissants. Seriously, if you have not yet made the trip up Tenth Avenue to 54th Street to Christophe Barbier’s little café, you have deprived yourself of one of the best baked goods in the city. When we wrote about Nova Café last February, we called his pains aux raisins among the best we have eaten in the US. But after a few more months of delicate butter horns and sugar-dusted almond treats, we are ready to call this match officially: Barbier outshines even local fave Claude.

2008 may go down in history as the most eventful year of the decade. The year in food was no exception, and with that in mind we bring you our two-part look back on the year that was. First, the bad news:

1. Biggest Disappointment in the Smallest Package: The shuttering of Sushi Jun. Perhaps the city’s best intimate date restaurant, Sushi Jun was, simply put, a miracle. Just consider the facts: In Sushi Jun we had a moderately priced Japanese restaurant that served an ample array of sakes and beers, a cozy atmosphere with some of the friendliest service in town, not to mention superior sushi and sashimi that rivaled restaurants charging four or five times as much. The tender, buttery yellowtail was enough on its own to propel Sushi Jun into the Hall of Fame. But with only four two-tops and ten seats at the bar, volume was never going to be this restaurant’s lifeblood. Universal Plaza’s high rent and a dwindling trickle of savvy, wealthy Midtowners sealed the deal in November: Sushi Jun sold out to new owners. Its replacement, Ichi Masa, is cheaper, busier, and about as good as a visit to the Gristede’s sushi counter. R.I.P., Sushi Jun.

2. Worst Business Model: NYC Icy (Manhattan). We waited. And waited. Then, when all was said and done, we waited some more. Finally, mid-summer, nearly a year-and-a-half after they announced their opening, NYC Icy made good on its promise to serve up frozen treats on Tenth Avenue. Sure, the interior of the shop looked as if it had been slapped together in a weekend–from its stark, primer-white walls and the peeling graffiti decal decoration, to its barely-there sales counter and disposable furniture. No marketing blitz, no press opening, no lessons learned from champion shop-openers GROM, nothing. Just a door plastered with signs and reviews from their long-shuttered LES shop and a whisper-quiet debut, followed by months of excruciatingly little business. Even on the hottest day of the year, we got a cone in 3 minutes. We predicted NYC Icy wouldn’t last, that they would close the Manhattan shop to focus on their more sustainable (read: cheaper, with fewer disappointed locals) Brooklyn store. As of today, that is exactly what has happened. Eh, we’ll live.

3. Luxury Product with the Worst Timing: Lambda Olive Oil. A $400-per gallon pricetag may have appealed to a few status-seekers over the past few years, but as Wall Street crumbles, is there anyone willing to shell out $50 for a bottle of this decent-but-not-extraordinary oil? Even in this economy, we still recognize that paying a premium for some excellent products is a smart decision, but Lambda’s flat, characterless flavor profile makes it the kind of luxury that we would ditch first to save a few bucks in a recession economy.

4. Worst (Possible) Overreaction to a Google Alert: The firing of Islero’s kitchen staff. We knew the staff had spotted us taking photos, even as we tried to be discreet, so it was no surprise when the manager whispered to me three times on our first visit, “I’ll be waiting to see what you write about us. I think I know who you are.” Yet when we hit the ‘Publish’ button, none of us expected the guillotine chop that followed. Within hours of our mixed review of the restaurant–and to be fair, after several earlier negative write-ups in print media that preceded our first visit–the entire kitchen staff at Islero was summarily dismissed and given a police escort out the door. Ouch. And hey, we did like the pumpkin churros.

5. Worst New Noodle Bar: Kambi. We will be the first to admit that we have been celebrating the East Village’s ramen revolution. The past year has seen the arrival of some truly wonderful Japanese noodle shops, as that increasingly thunderous slurping noise coming from First Avenue proves. Clearly, the ramen bar has been raised–which is why when we read that Minca’s new sibling, Kambi, was opening in the neighborhood, we expected great things. Sadly, we found the noodles as bland as the dull, watery broth. Countdown to a new Duane Reade Express: Ten months.

Toloache is a Midtown oddity: a very decent restaurant situated smack in the middle of block-upon-block of Theater District humdrummery. Surrounded by its overpriced and underwhelming peers, Toloache (pronounced toe-low-AH-chay), open now for a little more than a year, is all the more remarkable for its clear overarching goal–to take the humble Mexican food of the taco stand and South American street cart to new culinary (and pecuniary) heights. With a few exceptions, it achieves this goal well through the use of unusual indigenous ingredients like huitlacoche, a surprisingly toothsome fungus that grows on corn. It also does not hurt that Toloache’s flattering lighting and polished décor help make diners feel like they are eating something special, even if it made of something nicknamed ‘corn smut’.

Really, the huitlacoche dishes are among Toloache’s best–and the waitstaff are good at convincing even unadventurous eaters to give them a try. When asked, servers explain delicately that huitlacoche is similar to a mushroom, which is certainly less off-putting than calling it by its salacious-sounding nickname. [The only chef in town who could pull off serving a dish like that is Kenny Shopsin, who would undoubtedly turn Smutty Tacos into one of his biggest sellers.] Whatever you call it, you can find huitlacoche on what seems like every other dish: from tilapia to salmon, as well as on tacos with cactus and double cream, and–most brazenly–layered into a huitlacoche salsa poured over a corn quesadilla with black truffle shavings and manchego cheese (pictured above right, $13). This indulgent, savory dish is on the small side, but it is rich and nuanced enough to make up for it.

The same cannot be said of the chicken enchiladas (pictured above left, $20), an uninspired concoction of dry chicken breast, floppy enchilada dough and pico de gallo sauce. The additions of dried fig and a spicy apple salad ought to help, but they do not provide the one thing the dish needs to save itself: moisture. On the other hand, the shredded pork, carnitas de lochon, in the form of the roasted suckling pig, (pictured right, $26) are much better. The entire dish reminds us a bit of vinegary North Carolina pulled pork barbecue, but with its complex, smoky flavor imparted not by smoke but by guajillo peppers and a habanero-inflected sour orange salsa. Stretchy, crunchy chicharrones offer the perfect complement to elevate the dish to another level.

Toloache also gets props for its guacamoles and ceviches, both of which are available in tasting trios for between $21 and $27. The guac trio (my personal favorite) includes a cool, mild variation, a medium guacamole with a sprinkling of sweet pomegranate seeds, and a spicy tomato-based version that is addictively tangy. With rapidly-replenished baskets of chips, it is dangerously easy to fill up on appetizers alone. The two-tiered dining area presents another, albeit non-culinary danger: Tables on the second level balcony are separated from the customers below by an open wrought-iron fence. On a recent visit, my over-eager reach for a dip into the guacamole swept my eyeglasses off the balcony and directly into the meal of a none-too-happy couple below. For their sake and my own, I was grateful I hadn’t knocked the guac.

Toloache, 251 West 50th Street (between Broadway and Eighth Avenues), 212-581-1818.

Lots going on behind the scenes at the Noshpad and the Noshpad North. Sometime soon, we will tell you the story about how, this month, we almost became vintners on a farm 100 miles north of the city. Despite any new adventures we undertake, one thing remains constant with us: Our love of seasonal culinary traditions. One of our most cherished is, of course, the latke (potato pancake). At this time of year, if you are very quiet, you can almost hear the sound of several million box graters working overtime. Ours certainly are.

Fittingly, one of our most popular posts from the past three years is our half-mashed, half-grated restaurant-style latke recipe; it has been reproduced elsewhere many times since we first published it (with permission and without), but in case you missed it and are looking for a mind-blowingly incredible potato pancake for your Chanukah celebration, we offer it to you once again, in its original festive context. Enjoy!

Middle Eastern food has a bad reputation. Some of this is easy to trace back to a Midtown full of greasy fast-food falafel carts and grimy storefronts hawking greyish gyros, no doubt. But some of it also boils down to an imprecise and inaccurate culinary calculus that we, as American eaters, are guilty of performing. Its central axiom: if chickpeas, then downmarket.

Hummus Kitchen, a new Israeli café in Hell’s Kitchen, has found a gentle way of shifting thinking about Middle Eastern food. The first line of attack is through décor–with exposed brick walls, comfy pillows and a shop-long lacquered banquette, as well as flooring that melds Art Nouveau-esque squiggles and traditional patterns, the restaurant feels extremely well put-together. While we do not generally place much emphasis on design–for us, food is the eternal sine qua non–the fact that Hummus Kitchen has paid such careful attention to its interior gives a little insight into the breadth of its subtle reputation rehab project.

Thankfully, the kitchen pays the same obvious attention to detail. In our several visits to the restaurant, we have eaten or drunk nothing that was not at least solidly good, along with several items that were truly wonderful. Among these is the mint-lemon granita lemonana (pictured left, $2.50)–a cooling, sinus-clearing drink that might be a bit out of season right now, but will be the first thing we order when the sun comes back to town. The restaurant’s eponymous dish (pictured below left, $3.95) was certainly worth naming the restaurant for, especially its texture, which is smooth yet substantial, and just garlicky enough to give a little lilt to the chickpeas. Interestingly, the hummus is served not only with a palm-sized round of perfect pita, but also with a green hot sauce that we suspect to be the kitchen’s version of skhug Temani, a zippy purée of coriander, peppers, garlic and vinegar–an unusual and very welcome addition to a plate of hummus.

Among the Mazze (small plates, all $3.95, no Frankie Beverly), we are big fans of the toothsome roasted cauliflower with green tahini, as well as the super-simple, super-savory feta and beet salad. The mixed platter of six or more mazze is the best way to taste several of the items, none of which disappoints. We also favor the ‘Super-Healthy Salad’ (pictured on Flickr, $6.95), and while we won’t make any claims about the health benefits of a quinoa and dried fruit salad, we can say that the textural contrast between soft butternut squash wedges and creamy, yogurt-slathered quinoa is pretty special. In the few months since Hummus Kitchen opened, this has become our new favorite lunch.

Among the house-made desserts, the traditional orange-infused knaffe and the crisp-tender baklava (pronounced by the staff as bach-LAU-ah) are our favorites (all three pictured on Flickr, all $4.50), especially eaten with a cup of very hot mint tea. Sure, all of this sounds like classic Middle Eastern fare, and indeed, it is. But what is truly different, and even a little transgressive, about Hummus Kitchen is the panache with which every meal is executed. Everything about the experience feels like a tremendous upgrade from other Levantine restaurants serving similar food at this price point. If the staff keep this up, both in Hell’s Kitchen and at the forthcoming Upper East Side location, they might just be able to pull off one of the best–and most well-deserved–reputation makeovers of the decade.

Hummus Kitchen, 768 Ninth Avenue (between 51st and 52nd Streets), 212-333-3009.

3 things we’re loving this week:

1. Zingerman’s Delicatessen. When HungryMan was asked to travel to Ann Arbor this week, my heart fluttered. “Zingerman’s!” I insisted, “You have to eat at Zingerman’s Deli.” One overstuffed, cheese-and-mustard Ménage à Turkey sandwich later, I added a convert to my list.

If you are not familiar with Zingerman’s, just picture a business that blends the best elements of Katz’s Deli, Wichcraft, Ronnybrook Farms, and Fairway, all just a stone’s throw from the University of Michigan campus. My personal favorite arm of Ari Weinzweig’s growing empire is the Zingerman’s bakery that produces some of the best sweet breads I have eaten in the US, not to mention their own addictive savory creation: parmesan pepper bread ($15.00 per 1-1/4 lb. loaf). Lucky for those of us not in Michigan, Zingerman’s does a reliable and speedy mail-order business. They even offer a package called the Nosher Triple Cake Temptation–what’s not to love about that?

2. Persimmon season. Speaking of Fairway, we spotted the display shown above on a late-night visit this week. As excited as we were about the groaning stand of fist-sized persimmons, we had to laugh at the sign posted there. “Just bite in.” it reads, “It’s [the persimmon] mildly sweet and won’t make you pucker like its cousin, the Hachiya persimmon.” No arguments here, except that the persimmons for sale there were all Hachiyas.

Still, we love the idea of urging Gothamites to eat more persimmons, especially at this time of year, when they are so abundant and ripe. Our new favorite way to serve them–a recipe given to us by a local pastry chef–is to peel and cube them and toss them with cubed marshmallows and a squirt of lime juice. This tart-sweet dessert is what the poor Thanksgiving candied yams secretly all wish they could become.

3. 1800 Tequila Essential Artists line. Whenever I start to feel a little down about the changing weather, wishing for something more temperate and balmy, I make tequila drinks. As cooling as they are in summertime, they also possess an herbaceous background flavor that reminds me of warm succulent plants, no matter what the weather is outside. Add a little citrus and the illusion is complete. This year, we found yet another reason to buy tequila: 1800’s Essential Artists bottles (approx. $50). Dosa Kim’s dark, manga rabbit hunt (pictured left) bottle is not only mesmerizing to look at (even before a drink), it is a great example of how packaging can sometimes genuinely enhance a product. It also doesn’t hurt that the Agavera Carnichines silver tequila inside makes a superlative margarita.

By quite some distance, our favorite thing about Thanksgiving is the stuffing. Whether it is cooked inside a turkey or prepared á la carte as a side dish–which technically makes it dressing, not stuffing–nothing beats savory cubes of herbed bread and sautéed onions. As a child, I cultivated a reputation for being able to polish off a pound or two of the stuff over the course of a long weekend. Then, as a young adult, I discovered a seasonal treat that, to this day, still makes me miss Chicago: Jewel-Osco’s stuffing bread.

Essentially just loaves of white bread with stuffing herbs baked in, Jewel’s loaves were always the highlight of my Novembers. Designed to be used in the preparation of fresh stuffing, they were also perfect for sandwiches–I found that tuna, as well as turkey, worked especially well with the bread, and that the bread was just as good toasted and spread with butter.

Unfortunately, not only has Jewel stopped selling its stuffing bread in the vast majority of its supermarkets, they have no East Coast equivalent. Sure, something called ’stuffing bread’ is readily available in grocery stores now, but this is either simply unsliced white Pullman loaves or day-old bread.

So, determined to recapture a bit of that November magic, I set out to re-engineer Jim Lahey’s brilliant no-knead bread recipe and create my own perfect stuffing bread for Thanksgiving. I began with the essence of stuffing: sage, rosemary and onion, tinkering with proportions and methods of really diffusing the sage aromas throughout the loaf. I discovered that the best way to do this is to: (1) use a substantial amount of thinly-chiffonaded fresh sage (about 1/3 cup), which seems like a lot, but some of the flavor fades over the course of the rising time; and (2) steep half the sage in the water to create a ‘tea’ to spread the flavor into the entire loaf. I also doubled the salt and increased the yeast by about 30%, as rosemary and onion can inhibit the growth of yeast in the right conditions.

A few loaves (and a few dozen sandwiches) later, I have what I expect will be a new Thanksgiving tradition at the Noshpad and beyond: A loaf of crusty, oniony bread that makes a superlative leftover sandwich, and better still–one that tastes like November.

Stuffing Bread


1/3 c. fresh sage, chopped into a thin chiffonade
2 T. fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1/3-1/2 medium Vidalia or other sweet onion, finely diced (1/4″)
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. ground black pepper
3 c. all-purpose flour plus more for dusting, as needed
1/3 t. instant yeast
1-2/3 c. water
cornmeal

Infuse 2/3 c. of the water with half the sage by heating the water and sage together on the stovetop or in the microwave until just simmering. Let steep for 10 minutes at room temperature. Squish sage leaves in the infusion to release their flavors. Then add this water back to the other 1 c. of water to cool it down. Set aside.

Combine flour, yeast and salt in another large bowl. Add herbs and onion. Stir until blended. Dough will be very sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rise for 12-18 hours at room temperature. Lightly dust a work surface with flour and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

Coat a kitchen towel generously with cornmeal or flour. Gently shape dough into a ball, using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking and place seam-side down, onto the kitchen towel. Dust with more cornmeal or flour and cover with another kitchen towel. Leave to rise for two hours, or until doubled in volume. Dough is ready when it is no longer springy when poked with a finger.

Heat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. Place a very large oven-safe bowl or heavy covered pot in the oven as it heats. When dough is ready, slide it off the towels, seam-side up into the bowl or pot. If the dough looks sloppy, that is fine. Cover with the pot’s top or a cookie sheet and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the cover and bake another 15-30 minutes, or until the top of the loaf is browned. Remove from pot or bowl and cool on a rack.

2008 nycnosh.com

The café’s dining room is what really triggered my déja vu–I spent at least an hour wondering how, in Rouge Tomate’s flashy new Bentel & Bentel-designed East 60th Street digs, I could feel such strong nostalgia. At the midway point through my meal, it suddenly hit me: the cavernous, ultra-modern space and waitstaff dressed in red tunics were, together, an uncanny recreation of the Logan’s Run set that haunted my childhood dreams. If I half-closed my eyes, I could almost see Michael York and Jenny Agutter dodging laser blasts as they ran down the stairs into the restaurant’s main dining room. Even the bill at the end of the meal listed our server as Susan 402–eerie.

Fortunately, the restaurant’s focus is on healthful dining, not machine-pressed protein pellets and plankton. The Belgian-born chain’s motto is ‘S.P.E.’, which, depending on which of the franchise’s many explanations you read, stands for ‘sanitas per escam‘ (’health via nutrition’), ’sourcing. preparation. enhancement’, or ‘santé, plaisir, équilibre‘ (’health, pleasure, balance’). Despite the abbreviation’s leaky meaning, the general culinary philosophy is sound: ingredients are local, clean and seasonal, with no frying or grilling. It sounds austere, but Rouge Tomate does a remarkably fine job working within its restrictions, even managing to produce dishes–and fully alcoholic cocktails–that do not taste Road to Wellville-esque. Case in point: HungryMan and I were both taken with the tequila-carrot-citrus combination in the Out of State ($14)–a light and demi-sweet mixed drink that was as lethal as it was rich in beta-carotene.

We both also enjoyed the fresh combination of chunky cuts of chicory with tender pears and Gorgonzola cheese in the chicory salad appetizer (pictured above left, $12.00)–nothing revelatory in such a salad, but the freshness of all the components was apparent throughout. But when we come back for a quick bite to eat, we will skip the salad and go right for the op-art terrine with tiny baby carrots and couscous (pictured top, $15.00), not so much for the whimsical presentation, but for the deft matching of savory and sweet flavors in the terrine itself and its couscous accompaniment.

The terrine made a perfect complement to my main dish of striped bass with a light, oniony vegetable stew. I do have to wonder how the seared bass skin does not violate the no-frying dictum, but the dish was a pleasure to eat, so I did not worry too much that my santé might be partially compromised by a little extra lipid.

We are also a little suspicious of the aromatics on the roasted chicken (pictured left, $21.00), which glistened like they had been sautéed before being added back to the serving dish with the disassembled chicken. No complaints though, as the bird was very moist and seasoned smartly, with just enough salt. Frankly, this was every bit as good as any roast chicken we have eaten in a restaurant this year–even better that it was, ostensibly, a healthier version of the dish. And it is here that the similarities to Logan’s Run end. After all, Rouge Tomate’s ethos is all about extending life, not extinguishing it, even for a couple of geezers who are well past our official Renewal dates.

Rouge Tomate, 10 East 60th Street (between Madison and Fifth Avenues), 646-237-8977.

Nothing is more heartbreaking than losing a memory card, especially one with photos of your favorite annual food event. But thanks to the sensitive fingers of our dry cleaner, we not only got our memory card back, we got a quarter and a ten-pence coin out of the lining of a favorite blazer. We popped all the photos onto our Flickr site post-haste, and we hope you take a gander.

Of all the dishes we ate at the event, our favorite was not made by a New York chef. Instead, it was Tom Aikens (of the eponymous London restaurant) who absolutely floored us with his silky, subtly herbal salt cod brandade (pictured above right). It was the best mouthful of food I have eaten in months. A very close second was Le Bernardin’s thick, decadent brown butter cream–almost a pudding–with sweet potato caviar and red wine reduction. I went back three times, I confess. So, London for mains and New York for dessert? Seems just about perfect.

3 things we’re loving this week:

1. Tonight’s New York Magazine’s annual New York Taste event. This has become our very favorite food shindig of the year, the point around which our autumn calendar pivots. Not only is the event a fantastic charity fundraiser for the very worthy City Harvest, it is a slick night of some of the city’s best nibbles. Best of all, it is not too late to make plans to attend, as there will be a small number of tickets available at the door at Skylight (Hudson and Dominick Streets). See you there!

2. Insieme’s tortelli di zucca ($10 as an appetizer, $19 as a lunch entrée), quite possibly the best pumpkin pasta we have eaten in years, and certainly our favorite stuffed pasta of the season. What makes Insieme’s take on the classic pumpkin ravioli so special is the crunch from the amaretti biscuits, the bittersweet flavors from the mostardi fruits, and a subtly musky hit of fried sage. If only every Fall lunch could be like this.

3. The pilaf resurgence. Doing more with less does not always mean sacrificing flavor. Where risotto once ruled, pilafs–which require less expensive rice and are generally much more forgiving of overcooking–are now staking their claim. We’re happy to see it, especially since it means that one of our old Russian/Uzbek favorites, plov, an ultra-garlicky version of the dish, stands a real chance of making its way onto a few local menus. The name will need a little tweaking to make it sound as appetizing as the dish really is, but the idea is right for these economic times.