Piora

Images from Piora for the Village Voice

Piora

430 Hudson Street

http://www.pioranyc.com

RIGATONI red wine, duck sausage, charred fig, spigarello 

BARBEQUED OCTOPUS fermented pepper, basil, pine nut

CARROTS pistachio, yogurt, ham

ROHAN DUCK jujube, farro, black garlic

ROHAN DUCK jujube, farro, black garlic

Weighing in on Pounds & Ounces

While Chelsea may be a fantastic area to play, lounge hop, and people watch, one thing it has seemed to lack is a one-stop shop where you can enjoy delicious food either as a snack with friends over conversation, specialty cocktails, intimate lounge seating, a communal bar with a great group scene, or secluded dining, along with outdoor seating in great weather.  And then I met Pounds and Ounces (160 8th Ave at 18th Street).

I was pretty thrilled to discover Jeff Kreisel had recently taken over as Executive Chef, as his creations in Long Island City at Penthouse 808 had really elevated rooftop dining in my neighborhood.

In a recent post by The Village Voice, the chef explains, "The whole dinner menu is new. We still have some burgers, but we've added lighter fare and gluten-free options, and we've focused on seasoning properly, portioning properly, and sourcing very locally."

Chef Kreisel is working on the lunch menu and a late night menu, so I can't wait to return soon to see what new dishes he has in store.  In the meanwhile, here are is a preview of what a great dinner menu he already has set in place.

Summer Watermelon Salad with mint, cucumbers, tomatoes, ricotta salata, toasted pine nuts, & lemon dressing.

Chicken Liver Pate with truffle salt

Citrus & Herb cured salmon with beet couscous, citrus creme fraiche, and corn blinis

Lobster Corn Dogs with Meyer Lemon Aioli

Seared scallops with eggplant caviar, roasted tomatoes, crispy sunchokes, & aged vinegar

Seared Halibut with maitake mushrooms, fingerling potatoes, and scallion-ginger pesto

F&Kn Burger with onion marnalade, fontina, pineapple braised short ribs, pickled green tomato chips, on brioche.

Oficina Latina: a progressive dinner along the Pan-Am Highway

Paella de Mariscos at Oficina Latina

Oficina Latina  (24 Prince Street, NYC; (646) 381-2555; www.oficinalatinanyc.com)

Oficina Latina is anything but your typical biker or NASCAR bar, tucked inconspicuously on a more introverted stretch of Prince Street in Nolita.  But just beyond the garage door (which opens to the street in warm weather) sits an unofficial museum to the Pan American Highway during the 1950s, colorfully adorned with racing helmets, old black-and-white photos, mechanic 'trouble lights' dangling from cords coiled around exposed pipes, and a whole gallery's worth of vintage memorabilia evoking the spirit of the elusive highway during its heyday.  By sunset each day, the entire space is rip-roaring with a crowd of fans of a different sort.  These are fanatics of some particularly innovative cocktails, a killer tapas menu, and a versatile casual environment suited for intimate couples and groups alike.                                                                                      

Beyond the bar and communal tables sits is a more intimate dining area near the back

Just as the decor evokes a nostalgia for the spirited raceway, Executive Chef Eric Gaitan's menu reads like the itinerary for a progressive dinner running the full span of highway between Central and South America. Contemporary tapas from the nations along the highway are denoted with abbreviations on the menu,  with culinary roots from Monterrey in Mexico all the way to Buenos Aires.

Begin with a Peruvian ceviche of fresh tilapia with pink grapefruit segments served with crisp yucca chips, ideal for sharing.  Must-trys are the Venezuelan arepas, available with chimichurri short ribs, vegetables with white bean spread, or these salmon arepas--grilled spinach masa pockets stuffed with tender pink Scottish salmon crudo with buttery avocado, tangy pickled tomato skin, and sharp green onions.

The flavors at Oficina Latina are strikingly familiar, just executed to delicious perfection.  The camarones al ajillo are larger than life whole shrimp that arrive on a sprig of rosemary atop a wooden carving board.  The piquant spices and garlic gently glaze the outside of the sweet and succulent shrimp.  And if seafood is up your alley, the calamari is remarkably tender--jazzed up in a surprisingly subtle chile de arbol marinade, and then grilled.

A bartender muddles fresh lime for a caipirihna

But the tapas is by no means the only arena where the use of peppers is prominent.  Co-owner Paolo Votano, a notably charming Italian (who one particular evening roamed the floor in a denim mechanics suit with multiple pocket chains and a distressed ponytail like a tattooed Formula One playboy), has developed a seasonally-evolving cocktail list that loves to tease the balance between sweet, sour, and spicy by combining several fruits and peppers.

Weekday happy hour from 4-7 can be quite lively at the front bar, featuring buy one get one drinks.  But the drinks, even at full price, are some of the best Latin-inspired cocktails around.  Consider a mango peppercorn caipirihna or a prickly-pear-serrano-ginger mojito made with tequila.  Or purists may keep it simple, choosing from over 100 tequilas and mezcals, or over 100 rums, piscos, and cachacas.

After a few of the specialty cocktails and a starter or two, consider some of the larger plates, still excellent for sharing.  Warm, fresh mini tortillas are piled with daily roasted suckling pig, slivers of avocado, and a dollop of creamy garlic-serrano dressing.  These tacos should be award-winning, with crispy caramelized skin coating rosy, juicy, lean shreds of pork.  They are excellent.  Other delicious meats are served Argentine churrasco-style, like chimichurri skirt steak, a rich and crispy coated morcilla Colombian fried blood sausage, to a simple buy juicy, jalapeno-cilantro marinaded slow-roasted chicken.  Be sure to ask for extra tomatillo compote on the side, like a sweet, tangy green tomato marmalade that is fantastic judiciously slathered over any or all of the grilled meats.

For a sweet finale, desserts are drawn from the same pool of inspiration as many of the mixed coktails, with highlights such as a dulce de leche cheesecake with prickly pear and blackberries, or a playful lychee-serrano panna cotta with coconut ice cream and a drizzle of guava sauce.  Or for a slightly more sinful cap to the evening, try the irreverently plated 'Passion & Love' (Votano has it tattooed on his arm), the house signature shot of Venezuelan rum presented with three cut lines of cocoa powder, cinnamon, and brown sugar for dusting the orange wedges.

                                          
Whether for a cocktail, snack, a date, or a large gathering of friends, Oficina Latina holds the rare ability to captivate and satisfy almost any mood or palate.  So the next time you find yourself traveling downtown, it's definitely worth a pit stop at the very least.      

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

A Delicious Memorial Day Staycation

The Triboro Bridge and Harlem as viewed from Astoria Park

UPDATE: YOU DID IT!!!!  Your support won me the trip to Hawaii with Urbanspoon!!!  I'm cRaZy excited and a little overwhelmed at how many friends (and friends of friends of friends) helped make this happen.  Just goes to show what you can accomplish when you have an awesome community and team around you. I may have written a post and been invited to enter this contest, but YOU gave me this gift!  I get to go to HAWAII to do what I love to do!  Share food, culture, and tradition through my writing and photography.  Thank you SO MUCH!!!!

New York City is where you live when you want to live everywhere else in the world all at the same time.  Where else can you stroll just a few streets and travel from one ethnic enclave into another and another endlessly without leaving the city?  Though Memorial Day weekend marks a traditional date for New Yorkers to vacation outside the city and tourists from around the world to explore the Big Apple, my funds didn't add up for such an excursion.  But when you live in a city like New York, local travel can be just as thrilling, if not more, than journeying long distances.  After all, if each of the boroughs were independent cities, Brooklyn and Queens would still rank as the third and fourth largest cities in America, just behind Los Angeles and Chicago!  So I decided to devote my holiday weekend to celebrating the culinary diversity of the city by traveling to a few new locations beyond my usual borders.

The Smokehouse Club

What's an all-American holiday weekend without good, old-fashioned barbecue?  To start the weekend off, I headed to the highly acclaimed John Brown Smokehouse in Long Island City, Queens.  The crew there is built of a football coach, a former Navy SEAL, and a food blogger.  "None of us have ever been a 'sous' anything... we aren't fancy.  We just really love what we do," smiles owner and pitmaster Josh Bowen (formerly of Hill Country).  The proud Kansas native (a Jayhawk clock is displayed next to the soda fountain) is also known to occasionally pluck at his banjo, which rests on a stand near the meat counter.

Luxuriously velvety foie gras can be ordered atop any sandwich or platter, or as a side by itself.

Though reviews rave of the brisket and burnt ends, Bowen suggested I try the Smokehouse Club.  "People forget the turkey here is incredible."  It truly is delicious, juicy and smoked, stacked with pork belly brisket, fresh lettuce and tomato and a slight slathering of mayo.  Bottles of BBQ and Ghost Pepper BBQ (atomic, I am told) are at my disposal, but a sandwich this good doesn't need any extra sauce.  One side accompanies each order, and the mac & cheese is a tasty classic version, though the molasses-rich pureed sweet potato steals the show.

Homemade pies are lovingly baked by various members of the staff, who wave in turn as the cashier introduces each slice and its creator.  I wanted to try them all, along with a bread pudding, but just shy of needing a cot to sleep off my food coma, my friend and I settle on a wonderfully gooey and buttery pecan pie, balanced perfectly with a creamy, zesty key lime pie.  The dining room may be no frills, and you have to order from the counter.  But a meal here is well worth the trip--a gorgeous reminder of what is great about American cooking.  It was the ideal way to kickoff the holiday weekend.

Empire State Building & Midtown as viewed from the East River Ferry.

When you live in a city of five different boroughs--each unique and special in thousands of its own ways, how do you determine which one or two to visit over a Memorial Day weekend NYC "staycation"?  You don't.  You let all five of them come to you!

To kick off summer, Food Karma Projects produced a first-ever 5 Boro PicNYC featuring food and drink vendors from each borough, all held on Governors Island.  With history dating back to the Revolutionary War, the island has been part army base, part landfill, part coast guard headquarters and now national monument and center for recreation, turned over to the City of New York for just one dollar in 2003.

A complimentary ferry service taxis visitors to and from the island for free on the weekends, departing from Brooklyn Bridge Park and Manhattan next door to the Staten Island Terminal at South Ferry (near Battery Park).  My favorite way to visit the island, however, is via the East River Ferry, which stops at various ports along the East River in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens for just $4 one way or a $12 hop-on-hop-off pass, allowing for breathtaking views of the skyline, as well as unique ports of entry in culinary hotspots like Williamsburg, Hunters Point, and Midtown Manhattan.  Once on Governors Island, bicycles can be rented by the hour or full day--ideal for travel around the island's various recreational offerings, including snack bars, hammock coves, and even a miniature golf course.  But we weren't here for putt-putt, so it was straight to the row of colonial homes for the picNYC.

One of the most consistently long lines came from The Jarlsberg Cheese stand, one of the event's main sponsors.  From wafers and cheese with whole figs, to fired up grills making these golden molten sandwiches of gooeyness, one of the most delicious morsels of the day was this grilled cheese with maltese cured pork, silky relish, corn cracklin, and handmade bread.

I've always wanted to try these guys, but never quite make it down that far--so I was thrilled to see the Red Hook Lobster Pound.  They were offering exquisite lobster rolls either warm with butter "Connecticut Style" or chilled with mayo "Maine style".  Opting for the former, the meat was sweet, tender, and incredibly juicy on a beautifully toasted bun.  Nothing screams East Coast summer to me quite like this.

There were several sausages being smoked up around the park, but one of the most outstanding franks came from the team at Peels, who offered a homemade smoked green garlic and poblano kielbasa on a tender nest of braised cabbage.  It was the heartiest, most flavorsome sausage of the day, and one I won't soon forget.

"Try the healthy option" chanted the gang from the Brooklyn Grange, NYC's very own rooftop organic farm, with signs inviting customers to watch them toss their own salads.  And it just goes to show how refreshing and flavorsome simple, high quality ingredients can taste.  A mix of spicy leafy greens with a citrus-strawberry vinaigrette, and my palate was cleansed, my appetite ready to tackle other tidbits.

But there's something to be said for home, and loving what you know.  When I saw Chef Ian Kapitan of Alobar (the closest participating restaurant to my apartment), I nearly sprinted over to see what he was serving up.  All bias aside, it was one of the best sausages I have ever enjoyed--with duck and foie gras.  Several picnickers commented on the fantastic franks, pausing to ask what else they serve at Alobar, if they could make a sausage taste this special...

Just a few weeks ago, I devoured this mushroom toast, stacked with decadent and creamy smoked ricotta, roasted garlic, a duck egg, and red wine onions with a sweet little punch that holds the whole tower together.

Or how about their maple bacon popcorn with a drizzle of truffle oil -- the quintessential gastropub bar snack to duet with a frosted pint of craft beer.

As the day drew to a close, new and old flavors began to swirl like watercolors in my mind as a contented sleepiness settled in.  But isn't that part of the wonderful fun of a picnic and outdoor food festival?  Triggering memories of past favorites and inspiring new ones, in the first warm days of summer surrounded by new and old friends.  The 5 Boro PicNYC was a wonderful success, but half the fun was visiting the gorgeous Governors Island, which will be open with several other festivities on Saturdays and Sundays throughout the summer.  Even more comforting, returning home to Astoria that night, it was nice to be reminded of just how much I love my own little niche in this great city.

Mediterranean Morsels at Morso

View of the Queensboro Bridge from a park in Sutton Place, just down the street from Morso

Morso, 420 E. 59th St., NYC; (212) 759-2706 

After nine years living in New York City, it wasn't until I was invited to dinner at Morso that I realized what an unofficial and somewhat unfortunate meridian Second Avenue serves, especially at the mouth of the Queensboro Bridge.  Other than the sky tram to Roosevelt Island or taking the lower level to Long Island City, I have never really ventured east of Second.  Arriving a few minutes early for dinner, I took advantage of the time to explore the street that to the north becomes York, and Avenue A farther south.  Neither York nor Alphabet City, this small stretch of street known as Sutton Place is one of the most affluent in Manhattan, having served as home to Kenneth Cole, Sigourney Weaver, Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson, and even Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller.  The townhouses are beautiful--even more so, the views of the East River, the bridge, and Long Island City in Queens.  If planning a visit to Morso, I would absolutely recommend a stroll along Sutton Place to visit one of the small parks along the river.

Despite the rather exclusive surrounding neighborhood, Morso is extremely inviting.  Vibrant poster art commissioned specifically for the restaurant livens the border of the dining room, and an extremely friendly, accessible menu, features Italian and mediterranean dishes available either in large (tutto) or small (morso) portions, ideal for sharing a variety of plates.  It's the inspiration for the name, after all.

From the "Egg & Cheese" portion of the menu (a rotating daily egg dish is available at dinner), the gorgonzola fritters are a delicious harmony of temperatures, textures, and flavors, with crunchy crusted creamy gorgonzola on a bed of frisee with roasted pears, spiced walnuts, and a tangy apple cider vinaigrette.

The farro salad is a surprisingly hearty garden-inspired dish with tender farro grains, colorfully tart apricots, and earthy, meaty portobello and grilled eggplant.

Homemade pastas range from cannelloni florentine stuffed pasta rolls, to pappardelle blanketed with brisket-porcini ragout, as well as a classic take on spaghetti carbonara with savory bits of guanciale, onions, pecorino, and creamy egg yolk (pictured).

One of the most memorable bites of the evening was the capesante, sautéed scallops on a bed of black rice with piquant cubes of chorizo and roasted pepper, similar to what a south american risotto.  But the element that drew together the buttery shellfish with spicy sausage was a drizzle of a sweet and citrusy limoncello reduction.

The lamb chops, though flawlessly grilled and quite perfect, were only a secondary character to a side component that stole my favor from the entire evening--the chef's creative take on moussaka--a crispy crusted eggplant rollatini stuffed with minced merquez (lamb sausage) and feta, on a bed of white beans with a creamy mint sauce.  Rather than merely a side garnish, it was equally, if not more outstanding, than the chops.

A small, yett satisfying selection of desserts range from the Torta Napolitana (pictured), a decadently smooth neapolitan cheesecake studded with marsala-soaked dried fruit with a fresh strawberry puree, to an espresso hazelnut cake roll, as well as a selection of sorbet, gelato, and petit fours which change daily.