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EDITED BY ROBIN
RAISFELD AND ROB PATRONITE
Week of September 24,
2001 |
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The Underground Gourmet
You Want Frites With
That?
What will the French think? Even to us, F&B's new
fast-food take on steak-frites ($7.50, served in a Chinese-takeout-style
carton) sounds as wrongheaded as a $27 hamburger. All the more
surprising, then, for us to admit -- as we dueled with our two-pronged
wooden forklets for the last crispy Belgian-style fry and tasty
strip of garlic-buttered meat -- that it (and its $7.25 chicken-frites
counterpart) actually works. Deliciously.
F&B
269 West 23rd Street
646-486-4441
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Object of Desire
Golden Goose
Apparently, The Dining Room hasn't been paying
attention to those what's-in-what's-out lists, and we
couldn't be happier. Just when our jaded taste buds thought
they'd had it with foie gras -- the second-rate variety
as ubiquitous on menus as mesclun salads, the grade-A
type done in by weird treatments like a fever-pitched
drizzle of chocolate syrup -- along comes a save-the-day
stroke of genius from chef Mark Spangenthal. He pairs
the silky, sautéed stuff with delicate mounds of
baby basmati rice; nutty, curry-spiced "beluga" lentils;
a mini-plum tart; and (foam-phobes, beware) a frothy coconut-curry
sauce, all to stunning textural effect.
The Dining Room
154 East 79th Street
212-327-2500
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In Print
Nobu Tells
All
In his first cookbook, Nobu Matsuhisa shares the secrets
of his trend-setting new-style sashimi, his often-copied
black cod with miso, and his sea-urchin tempura (a "Tim
Zagat favorite!"). And in case that's not reason enough
to spring for Nobu: The Cookbook (Kodansha; $37),
the TriBeCan titan has snagged a preface from Robert De
Niro and a foreword from Martha Stewart, who gushes that
Matsuhisa "has changed the karma of Japanese food for
me forever." Sprinkled among the intriguing recipes and
stunning photographs are an aji-to-yuzu glossary, a shopping
guide, and helpful tips on how to de-slime octopus and
the proper way to eat sushi (dip the topping, not the
rice).
Nobu
105 Hudson St.
212-219-0500
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Best of the
Week
Delmonico Donates,
September 24 to 28
This week, 50 cents of every dollar spent at Delmonico's
-- the financial-district restaurant that's still soldiering
on after 175 years -- will go to the families of firefighters
and cops who died at the World Trade Center.
Delmonicos
56 Beaver St., at South Williams St.
212-509-1144
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