Pear Bombe at Northern Spy Food Co.

14 Wednesday Nov 2012

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When Northern Spy Food Co. opened in the East Village in 2009, it immediately felt like a neighborhood institution, something that had grown organically with the greening and cleaning up of Alphabet City. For some, the grime east of Tompkins Square Park was part of the charm, one of the last gritty parts of lower Manhattan; for the newer implants, the arrival of a seasonally-minded restaurant, one that proudly (some might say obnoxiously) wears its purveyors on its sleeve, couldn’t come soon enough.

The interesting thing about Northern Spy Food Co. has been its insistence on maintaining a low profile, preferring to blend into the community rather than shine above it. Despite a glowing New York Times write-up in 2010 and constant appearances on “Best Of” roundups, Northern Spy Food Co. tends to eschew the spotlight, favoring homey Sunday Suppers and a lunch delivery service over glitzy publicity stunts and a haughty hostess stand. Really, the only pretentious thing about the place is their aforementioned insistence on listing farms and purveyors, but even that can be construed as earnest, not mimetic.

As such, you end up with a menu that is thoughtful and well executed, but ultimately comforting and filling. This is not fragile food, although some components are handled delicately. Yes, there is the obligatory kale salad, but it is shredded and showered with shaved clothbound cheddar. There are sticky buns, savory, stuffed with pork, iced with parsnip glaze.

This sensibility also applies to the small but smart dessert list.

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Tiramisu Bomboloni at Bomboloni

07 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by in Doughnut

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I hope that you are comfortably reading this in your office or wherever you elect (Ha, get it? Elect? Go Obama!) to spend your days, and, more importantly, that it didn’t take you hours to get to that location via hobbled, gridlocked public transportation. After a week in my beloved Brooklyn, even I had exhausted the bountiful online television options and tired of fighting off the other housebound young’uns for a seat at a standing-room-only coffee shop. Novelty wears off all too soon, but it goes even faster when you are confined to a limited swath of one borough. I was (shockingly) looking forward to a return to normality, the daily grind even.

And in my mind, there is one food that is a near metaphor for work and office life, and that food, my friends, is the doughnut.

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Walnut Baguette Surprise at Tous Les Jours

31 Wednesday Oct 2012

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I am writing this from a café in Park Slope – the first significant amount of time I’ve spent outside my tiny apartment in nearly two days – after Hurricane Sandy made its grand entrée into the lives of New Yorkers and millions of others across the eastern seaboard.

To call the experience surreal is a gross understatement. I sat cozy by my laptop last night, binging on network sitcoms online with a glass of mellow red wine at my side, stopping every twenty minutes to get an update on the horrors taking place outside of my insulated Brooklyn bubble.

First, just after dinner time, my friends in low-lying areas of the city started systematically losing power, courtesy of a cautious Con Ed. Their Facebook posts signing off for the foreseeable future (made possible by waning smartphone batteries) were evidence not just of the modern mode of real-time, social media communication, but of the imminent storm damage.

Then came the reports of the spectacular Con Ed transformer explosion. Pretty soon, downtown was in the dark, along with the east side below 34th Street. The NYU Langone Hospital, on 34th Street and First Avenue, had to emergency evacuate 200-some patients down nine flights of stairs after their basement generators flooded and their first floor was underwater.

Along the way, the unimaginable continued to transpire. Facades literally fell off buildings, exposing their innards to the elements. A crane dangled precariously at the side of a luxury condominium construction site. One Hoboken PATH station was steadily submerged as water gushed in through the sides of a compromised door, and yet across the city a small but tightly packed beach community unquenchably caught on fire, fanned by the relentless winds.

It is hard to reconcile these reports with the otherwise quotidian experience I have had these last few days. It is easy enough to pretend that this is just an uneventful, exceptionally long Brooklyn-bound weekend, but the reality is that we are essentially trapped where we are, unable to access the lifeblood that is the New York City subway system. It won’t be until buses start circulating again and people like me in relatively unscathed areas are able to see more of the damage personally that the effects of the storm will seem like more of a reality, something that happened to us rather than something that happened to them.

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Dough on the Go: Pumpkin Ginger Bread at Baked and Wired, Washington, D.C.

24 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by in Bread, Doughnut, Muffin

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Every now and then, I do leave New York City for other locales. When I do, I will dutifully report on some of the local and/or regional specialties.

Title: “Pumpkin Ginger Bread: A Tale of Heartbreak”

Setting: Our favorite Dough-Eyed correspondent has taken a few days to explore the wonder of our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C.  After some expert advice, she has made a potentially life-changing discovery: a breakfast food creation of superhuman proportions, a hybrid so simple yet so ingenious that it could only be the work of a mad-but-brilliant baker. The item: the donut muffin, pioneered at the bakery Baked and Wired.

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Halo-Halo at Talde

17 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by in Frozen Dessert

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I have a confession to make. I am a fan of reality TV. Okay, not all reality TV, but I firmly believe that some reality TV is better than other reality TV. For example: Top Chef is (was) an excellent example of reality TV that showcased brute talent, unfettered ambition, and improbable setups that lead to astoundingly inventive creations, much like its Bravo forebear, Project Runway.

Inevitably, all of this talent, ambition, and creativity leads many Top Chef contestants, winners or not, to open their own restaurants. Such was the case with Dale Talde, cheftestant on Season 4 of Top Chef, who opened an eponymous restaurant, Talde, and a pork-centric bar, Pork Slope, within the span of a year, both in Park Slope. Of course, Pork Slope has no dessert on offer. Talde, however, now has two: a newly developed chocolate pudding, and the standby classic, halo-halo.

For anyone who remembers this moment from Top Chef, the choice becomes a no-brainer.


Halo-halo it is.

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Lemon Drop Pudding at Puddin’

10 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by in Pudding and Custard

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Let us for a moment take a minute to remember the joy of the Snack Pack, the delightful pudding treat that was always ready to eat, regardless of refrigeration or other means of remaining fresh. Strangely, while I’ve lost my taste for a lot of the artificial snacks that made up my childhood (mine was not a household of organic Cheerios and fruit leather), Snack Packs still hold up today as a comforting pick-me-up. Maybe it’s the nostalgia factor, but there is something unusually satisfying about a shelf-stable pudding cup.

But as much as a Snack Pack can cure a pudding craving, sometimes you want a more mature pudding. One with ingredients you can pronounce. One that requires storage below room temperature.

That’s when you head to a place like Puddin’ in the East Village.

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Green Pea Pastry at Paris Baguette

03 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by in Pastry

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Remember when Asian-fusion restaurants were all the rage in the late 90s and early aughts? And I’m not talking about Chinese restaurants that suddenly (and questionably) started serving sushi. I mean the places that usually paired something Asian (and by Asian, I mean Japanese) with something “exotic”, like the Cuban-Japanese places, or the Portuguese-Japanese places. Fun as it was when it first appeared, like most trends the food soon became rote and uninspired.

Today, there are still some highly visible Asian-fusion joints getting attention, Chinese-Indian and Korean-Mexican most notably, thanks to yet another craze: food trucks. But there is one lesser known fusion blend here that is better known in its land of origin: French-Korean. Specifically: French-Korean pastry.

If you head over to Koreatown, the heart of which lies on 32nd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, there are now not one, but two French-Korean bakeries on the street. The one holding residence longest is Paris Baguette, a popular Korean chain with outlets in South Korea, China, and the United States.

At Paris Baguette, you will find the typical red bean buns and airy sponge cakes that are common in many other Asian bakeries. However, you will also find some French classics, like canelés and pains au chocolat. But best of all, you will find hybrids like these guys: green pea pastries.

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Lavender Shortbread at Bakeri

26 Wednesday Sep 2012

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When I was young, my parents hired a bunch of au pairs to take care of my siblings and me while they were at work. They came from all over Europe: Spain, Sweden, Germany, Holland. Does that seem like a lot? It is. Technically, they were each supposed to stay for a year, but my two brothers and I were never “easy” children, so any given au pair lasted for a maximum of six months before she sent herself back to her home country.

That is, all but one: a Norwegian woman who not only lasted the full year, but somehow even liked us. After she left, she would faithfully write us letters (imagine the pure joy of receiving an airmail envelope when you are eight-years-old) and, better yet, send us Christmas care packages every year. It didn’t matter that we were Jewish. No dreidel-wrapped toy could compare to our annual Norwegian God Jul bag of marshmallow ropes, caviar in a toothpaste tube (for one brother who adored the stuff), and cartons of licorice all-sorts (which none of us touched).

Thanks to the wonders of Facebook, my family still keeps in touch with this babysitter, and I’ve always felt a sort of kinship to Norway because of her. In fact, one of the things that drew me to N. when we first met was that he has a research fellowship in the same Norwegian city where she is from. Coincidence? I think not. Okay, maybe.

So when I heard about Bakeri, a bake shop opened by a Norwegian, whose name means “bakery” in Norwegian and which stocks treats like Fjørd bread (a loaf chock full of imported whole grains) and skolebrød, I couldn’t wait to check it out.

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Blueberry Semifreddo and Mascarpone Panna Cotta at The Leopard at des Artistes

19 Wednesday Sep 2012

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One of the reasons I love New York City is the rapid change. Even in a bear economy, stores and restaurants bud, bloom, and then die, supplanted by the next new thing. It can be exciting and stimulating, manna for someone who thrills with the vibe of transition. But it also means that nothing can be held sacred. Old favorites can never be taken for granted, and the idea of a “classic” has an unusually temperamental tinge.

So when a colleague of mine suggested meeting at Café des Artistes for a leisurely lunch, I immediately recalled this history of this archetypal “Old New York” destination, opened in 1917 and renowned for serving some of the city’s elite.

Except that it wasn’t Café des Artistes anymore. It was reborn in 2011 as The Leopard at des Artistes.

Despite the jazzy, exotic new name, The Leopard at des Artistes maintains the stately feel of its predecessor. The large-scale murals covering the walls, a holdover from the Café days, remind you that this is still a place to bring your parents (or grandparents), assuming they are as well-heeled as the rest of the clientele.

If you are in the mood to linger and really want to treat yourself, The Leopard at Des Artistes is a perfect place to sit and enjoy a sumptuous dessert.

But choose wisely. The Leopard, despite its pedigree, has some standouts, but it also makes some rookie mistakes.

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Fig Jam at Recipe

12 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by in Bread, Brunch, Fruit

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There are a lot of people who think brunch in New York is for lazy wastrels who would rather spend an hour and a half in line simply to pay three times more for their organic poached eggs and French toast than if they had taken the ten minutes to prepare them for themselves at home. To which I say: sometimes a person wants someone else to poach her eggs or French her toast for her.

And let’s not forget the inordinate opulence of brunch offerings. It’s not just an omelet; it’s an omelette with goat cheese, heirloom tomato, and chives. They’re not just pancakes; they’re lemon-ricotta hotcakes topped with macerated strawberries. Semantics, sure, but it is nice to feel indulgent for less than $20.

Then, every once in a while, you order a humble item that so exceeds its promise, you remember: this is why brunch in New York is worth the hassle and expense.

The jam jar at Recipe on the Upper West Side is one of those items.

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