CHEAP EATS PLUS EVERYTHING UNDER $25 Untouched. Untainted. Unspoiled. ©2008 Finlandia Vodka Worldwide Ltd., Helsinki, Finland. Finlandia Vodka 40% Alc./Vol. Imported by Brown-Forman, Louisville, KY USA 40% Alc./Vol. Ltd., Helsinki, Finland. Finlandia Vodka Worldwide ©2008 Finlandia Vodka WHERE TO EAT 2008 From big-splurge blowouts to locavore temples to Naked Vodka down-and-dirty barbecue joints, Adam Platt selects the best places to eat right now. fi nlandia.com Keep your judgement pure. Drink responsibly. Illustration by Craig Ward where to eat | new york 3 WHERE TO EAT 2008 “ thank God,” declared my friend the , FoodO Aristocrat whenh I gave her the news. The great tidal wave of giant Vegas-style dining establishments that has flooded the city’s dining scene the last few years appears to have crested and washed out to sea. Down in the meatpacking district, you can still feast in great ocean- liner-size spaces if you wish, or drop thousands of dollars on sushi delicacies jetted in from around the globe. But New York turns out more prize-winning barbecue- pit masters these days than Anthos grandiose superstar chefs. In this hypercasual, eco-minded era, the really hot restaurants don’t require jackets or ties, and many don’t take farm-grown dinners and spiking into categories reflecting the most road map to take with you on your reservations. Japanese cooks have their $15 cocktails with carrot juice. notable culinary happenings of the culinary ramblings. Oh, and if you’re ditched the big-box model and are We analyze these curious dining moment. We will tell you where to looking for the finest Chinese grub once again opening elegant little trends, plus many more, in this, procure the most lethal absinthe in Brooklyn, we’ve got that, too, along restaurants in elegant little rooms. our annual compendium of all cocktails in town, instruct you with our yearly summation of New Dainty finger foods are the rage in that’s stylish, fabulous, and new on where to find a good duck egg York’s best new restaurants, the best Italian food, and the swells at the in the fickle galaxy of New York for brunch, and provide a list of up-and-coming chefs, and, last but posh new spots along Park Avenue restaurants. In the following pages, the most lavishly expensive haute not least, the best venues, in this age and at the Ritz aren’t clamoring for you’ll find our recommendations cuisine establishments in which to of rampant culinary correctness, soufflés. They’re ordering platters of for an entire year’s worth of serious blow the remnants of your year- for a sinfully delicious, hormone- organic Swiss chard to go with their eating, broken down, as usual, end bonus. Consider it a kind of saturated, nonorganic feast. 4 new york | where to eat Photographs by Jeff Mermelstein where to eat | new york 5 served with avocado and sticks of jícama; your meal the way the rest of the barnyard in wintertime, stick to the beef, particularly snobs do, with a weirdly bracing basil- the milky grilled veal chop, which is cucumber Mojito or a Tom Collins–style We’re ALL caked in a luxurious blanket of garlic and drink called the Jackrabbit, which is spritzed, bread crumbs and surrounded by drifts of not unpleasantly, with carrot juice. LOCAVORES NOW … sautéed chanterelles. Marco Canora learned all about the art Similar earthy specialties are on display at of high-minded Greenmarket cooking at The great Greenmarket tsunami, which BLT Market, in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, where Craft, where he ran the kitchen for one of began on the downtown fringes of the that canny franchiser Laurent Tourondel the original high priests of the movement, restaurant world three decades ago, has is busy indoctrinating hordes of business Tom Colicchio. And if you wish to taste BEST NEW now spread to the grand, upmarket joints in lunchers and eager out-of-town millionaires the purest kind of Slow Food cooking, midtown, engulfing everything in its path. into the cult of the artisanal, the farm- done in high Italian style, you’ll find it RESTAURANTS Park Avenue matrons don’t have to travel raised, and the locally grown. You can these days at his new midtown restaurant, of the year•• down to Blue Hill anymore for their fix of purchase pickled dilly beans and pots of Insieme. From the typeface used on the seasonally correct veggies. They’re gathering locally raised honey at the front desk, studied menu to the stripped-down, at Michael Stillman’s antic new restaurant, and instead of carefully wrought foie gras workmanlike white-oak tabletops, the INSIEME Marco Canora’s newest venture Park ­Avenue ­Winter, a place where the menu, canapés before dinner, every table receives boxy little theater-district establishment offers the latest in haute Italian dining, but with a fashionable Greenmarket twist. the décor, even the name change according a bowl of pickled vegetables and a baguette echoes Craft in all sorts of derivative, to the rhythm of the seasons. In summer- of fresh garlic bread in a paper bag. Tourondel mildly annoying ways. But you won’t ANTHOS The décor could be more inspired, time, the daisy-yellow walls were affixed with began his career as a seafood maestro, so find a rich, multilayered lasagne like this but the cooking establishes Michael Psilakis tortoise shells; now, they’re colored a silvery the real specialties on the menu are dishes anywhere in the vicinity of Times Square, as the Mario Batali of nouvelle Aegean cuisine. igloo white. This loopy exercise in seasonal like halibut, which is painted with layers of nor the pink, pasture-fed “baby beef dining sometimes tips toward the bizarre, basil and parsley pesto, and the delicious tartare,” which Canora folds with lemon SOTO The new temple of refined small- but it’s held together, in the end, by the steady Chatham cod, which the chef sinks, along and porcini mushrooms. Pheasant eggs plates dining. Order any dish on the menu high quality of Craig Koketsu’s cooking. If with wheels of fresh eggplant, in a faintly make the occasional appearance on the containing the word uni. it’s July, try the soft-shell-crab tempura, spicy, curried broth. After that, wash down “contemporary” side of the restaurant’s menu, but the real delicacies here are PARK AVENUE WINTER Michael Stillman’s Park Avenue Winter the traditional ones, like the great loopy, extravagant production is the ultimate fried-veal specialty fritto misto alla proof of that aged maxim: In the big city, fine Lucchese, and the medley of softly boiled dining is a form of performance art. meats called lesso misto, which the chef leavens with horseradish cream and BLT MARKET Haute Barnyard comes to the spoonfuls of freshly made salsa verde. Ritz. The hackneyed concept is rescued by the high quality of the cooking. HILL COUNTRY If you can’t get yourself to the great brisket capital of Lockhart, Texas, this honky-tonk in the Flatiron district is the THE ITALIAN next best thing. SMALL-PLATES INVASION RESTO The latest venue for chic gastropub dining. Lamb ribs are the hot dish in beef- eater circles, and these are the best in town. Forget about overstuffed gnudi, raw-fish crudi, and those giant, formally fashion- 15 EAST This intimate Union Square joint able portions of rustically charred bistecca represents a return to old-fashioned, no-frills Z sushi dining. T Fiorentina for two. Among cutting-edge Italian gastronomes, the rage right now GÖ A ALLEN & DELANCEY Classical uptown J are stuzzichini, or spuntini, or any kind dining comes to the Lower East Side. SIL of miniature, reasonably priced delicacy compact enough to fit on a tiny plate. I’m Considering Neil Ferguson’s talents, the thinking of Keith McNally’s clamorous, cooking should only get better. MARKET TABLE Market madness done well. Go at lunchtime, and order ILLUSTRATIONS: ILLUSTRATIONS: the cheeseburger. slightly confused new Italian brasserie, melting gnocchi all’amatriciana, Morandi Morandi, where the most accomplished composed of handmade gnocchi and dishes tend to be the little ones, like smothered in a deeply flavored ragù of plates of golden, crisp fritto misto, and tomatoes, onions, and guanciale. modest helpings of frizzled artichokes served with the stalks still intact, just like they do in Rome. Whenever I’m ambling down Eighth Avenue in the West Village, I like to duck into the raffish new bar- restaurant dell’anima for a stack of the SORRY, crunchy house bruschette before pro- NO RESERVATIONS ceeding to Centro ­Vinoteca, where my wife enjoys picking her way methodically through the seventeen “piccolini” items (she Once upon a time, the poshest sort of recommends the truffled eggs, the eggplant people agitated for reservations at fancy fritters, and the arancine rice balls) while uptown restaurants manned by haughty I bolt down Anne Burrell’s crispy-edged maître d’s dressed in shiny black dinner gnocchi and bowls of the butter-soaked coats. But in this, the no-jacket-required raviolo al’uovo, each of which contains a era, the hottest tables tend to be located single gently poached egg. in out-of-the-way neighborhoods in tiny- Lunchtime is still the best time to roomed establishments, many of which dine at the great Bastianich outpost Lupa don’t take reservations at all. If you on strips of eighteen-month-old gran don’t believe me, go mingle on a frigid riserva prosciutto di Parma, followed by Saturday evening with the rest of the a dainty forkful or two of the classic doomed hoi polloi outside Graydon oxtail coda alla vaccinara.