((could not agree more on the Vietnamese comment)
The New York Restaurant Wish List
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Pete Wells: A really first-rate Cantonese restaurant, like what Hakkasan could have been if the quality were as high as the prices. A spectacle with better than average food, where tourists will feel like they saw New York and New Yorkers will feel like they weren’t ripped off. (In other words, the kind of place that the Rainbow Room was under Joe Baum.) A Moroccan restaurant with a chef who pays attention to ingredients. More, and better, restaurants in Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant and the Bronx. And a place that does for Vietnamese food what Ayada, Sripraphai or, in a slightly different vein, Pok Pok Ny have done for Thai.
The new season is upon us, and so is Florence Fabricant’s annual list of the most notable restaurant openings. But instead of asking you which upcoming New York restaurants you’re most excited about — though by all means, share those if you have them — we thought we’d ask which restaurants you wish would open.
Suggestions can be pragmatic (better takeout in Fort Greene) or somewhat more detached from reality (a Pizzeria Uno at the Met). And if you want to mention specific chefs (“April Bloomfield’s doughnut shop in the middle of Union Square”), why not. Post them in the comments section.
We asked Dining reporters and critics to get the ball rolling by offering their suggestions:
Julia Moskin: The Upper West Side has been under a strange curse for decades, with great food shops (e.g. Zabar’s) but grim restaurants (e.g. Carmine’s). The wish list is long — a ramenya, an ice cream parlor — but my first priority is a decent place for Mexican street food, done right. Tamales with taste. Salsas that sing. Taquitos with dignity. If only …
Pete Wells: A really first-rate Cantonese restaurant, like what Hakkasan could have been if the quality were as high as the prices. A spectacle with better than average food, where tourists will feel like they saw New York and New Yorkers will feel like they weren’t ripped off. (In other words, the kind of place that the Rainbow Room was under Joe Baum.) A Moroccan restaurant with a chef who pays attention to ingredients. More, and better, restaurants in Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant and the Bronx. And a place that does for Vietnamese food what Ayada, Sripraphai or, in a slightly different vein, Pok Pok Ny have done for Thai.
Sam Sifton: A good bagel shop in Carroll Gardens would be fantastic. It’d be nice to have a white table-cloth French bistro somewhere in Brooklyn as well, with superior steak frites, straight, no chaser. I wish more better Chinese restaurants would open everywhere. How about a second Marc Forgione on the Upper West Side?
Florence Fabricant: I would be delighted if Laurent Gras got his act together and opened a restaurant in New York, if there could be even more options walking distance from BAM, and if Joël Robuchon would reopen L’Atelier somewhere.
Eric Asimov: Indulge me. This is what I would want to eat, not what I think will be economically successful: A great southern Indian restaurant with a wonderful list of fine sherries, ciders and beers. A Latino rice-and-beans joint — pernil, mofongo, pollo, the whole bit — that uses great ingredients, with a wonderful list of sherries, ciders and beers. And a French bistro that departs from the typical hackneyed menu and serves all the wonderful but uncommercial dishes you used to be able to find in the French countryside: lamb’s feet wrapped in tripe, wild hare, that sort of thing.
Glenn Collins: Regrettably, New York City has long lacked an authentic destination-location chopped-pork barbecue establishment that is faithful to the epistemology of Eastern North Carolina. It should be a weathered, rickety roadside shack with nonexistent signage, a gravel parking lot and no name.
The menu is necessarily limited. We are talking juicy, fatty chopped barbecue only — pit-fired from hard wood — from a pork shoulder or whole hog. It is to be served on a paper plate awash in a bath of cider vinegar with a bit of salt and red-pepper flakes. There must be hush puppies on the plate, yielding a crispy, corny, buttermilk taste. The fresh, cool coleslaw should be moist, but not runny enough to transgress upon the hush-puppy domain.
The plate should be alarmingly flimsy, and it must rest on a faded vinyl checked tablecloth. The forks and knives should be made of white plastic and stingily supplied, as if they are about to run out at any minute. The odd-lot tables should be rickety enough to defy any stabilization from strategically placed matchbooks. A greasy bottle of house-made hot sauce will keep the barbecue fundamentally honest.
Motorcycles should be revving up every five to six minutes in the parking lot. And it would be nice, but hardly necessary, to have grease-dotted, fading pictures of country celebrities on the wall, signed with illegible scrawls.
It is always advisable to locate such a barbecue shack way out in the woods, far from scented candles, sheriffs and revenuers. This is something of a challenge in New York City, but the good news is that it will be another year until the construction of a new café at Tavern on the Green in Central Park can be completed. Until then, the road to Tavern, called Warner LeRoy Place, extending into the park from West 67th Street, is surrounded by trees. Why not locate right there in the empty parking lot? It seems to be the perfect white-paper-napkin zone.
[removed]
What ranking are you speaking of and what are we trying to sell.........whats your real name:>)
Asked Skinny.
|
- Skinny 9-07-2012 2:41 am
The new season is upon us, and so is Florence Fabricant’s annual list of the most notable restaurant openings. But instead of asking you which upcoming New York restaurants you’re most excited about — though by all means, share those if you have them — we thought we’d ask which restaurants you wish would open.
Suggestions can be pragmatic (better takeout in Fort Greene) or somewhat more detached from reality (a Pizzeria Uno at the Met). And if you want to mention specific chefs (“April Bloomfield’s doughnut shop in the middle of Union Square”), why not. Post them in the comments section.
We asked Dining reporters and critics to get the ball rolling by offering their suggestions:
Julia Moskin: The Upper West Side has been under a strange curse for decades, with great food shops (e.g. Zabar’s) but grim restaurants (e.g. Carmine’s). The wish list is long — a ramenya, an ice cream parlor — but my first priority is a decent place for Mexican street food, done right. Tamales with taste. Salsas that sing. Taquitos with dignity. If only …
Pete Wells: A really first-rate Cantonese restaurant, like what Hakkasan could have been if the quality were as high as the prices. A spectacle with better than average food, where tourists will feel like they saw New York and New Yorkers will feel like they weren’t ripped off. (In other words, the kind of place that the Rainbow Room was under Joe Baum.) A Moroccan restaurant with a chef who pays attention to ingredients. More, and better, restaurants in Harlem, Bedford-Stuyvesant and the Bronx. And a place that does for Vietnamese food what Ayada, Sripraphai or, in a slightly different vein, Pok Pok Ny have done for Thai.
Sam Sifton: A good bagel shop in Carroll Gardens would be fantastic. It’d be nice to have a white table-cloth French bistro somewhere in Brooklyn as well, with superior steak frites, straight, no chaser. I wish more better Chinese restaurants would open everywhere. How about a second Marc Forgione on the Upper West Side?
Florence Fabricant: I would be delighted if Laurent Gras got his act together and opened a restaurant in New York, if there could be even more options walking distance from BAM, and if Joël Robuchon would reopen L’Atelier somewhere.
Eric Asimov: Indulge me. This is what I would want to eat, not what I think will be economically successful: A great southern Indian restaurant with a wonderful list of fine sherries, ciders and beers. A Latino rice-and-beans joint — pernil, mofongo, pollo, the whole bit — that uses great ingredients, with a wonderful list of sherries, ciders and beers. And a French bistro that departs from the typical hackneyed menu and serves all the wonderful but uncommercial dishes you used to be able to find in the French countryside: lamb’s feet wrapped in tripe, wild hare, that sort of thing.
Glenn Collins: Regrettably, New York City has long lacked an authentic destination-location chopped-pork barbecue establishment that is faithful to the epistemology of Eastern North Carolina. It should be a weathered, rickety roadside shack with nonexistent signage, a gravel parking lot and no name.
The menu is necessarily limited. We are talking juicy, fatty chopped barbecue only — pit-fired from hard wood — from a pork shoulder or whole hog. It is to be served on a paper plate awash in a bath of cider vinegar with a bit of salt and red-pepper flakes. There must be hush puppies on the plate, yielding a crispy, corny, buttermilk taste. The fresh, cool coleslaw should be moist, but not runny enough to transgress upon the hush-puppy domain.
The plate should be alarmingly flimsy, and it must rest on a faded vinyl checked tablecloth. The forks and knives should be made of white plastic and stingily supplied, as if they are about to run out at any minute. The odd-lot tables should be rickety enough to defy any stabilization from strategically placed matchbooks. A greasy bottle of house-made hot sauce will keep the barbecue fundamentally honest.
Motorcycles should be revving up every five to six minutes in the parking lot. And it would be nice, but hardly necessary, to have grease-dotted, fading pictures of country celebrities on the wall, signed with illegible scrawls.
It is always advisable to locate such a barbecue shack way out in the woods, far from scented candles, sheriffs and revenuers. This is something of a challenge in New York City, but the good news is that it will be another year until the construction of a new café at Tavern on the Green in Central Park can be completed. Until then, the road to Tavern, called Warner LeRoy Place, extending into the park from West 67th Street, is surrounded by trees. Why not locate right there in the empty parking lot? It seems to be the perfect white-paper-napkin zone.
- Skinny 9-07-2012 2:41 am [add a comment]
[removed]
- anonymous (guest) 9-08-2012 9:11 pm [add a comment]
tried to post a photo from cambodia damn
- Frank (guest) 9-08-2012 9:13 pm [add a comment] [edit]
What ranking are you speaking of and what are we trying to sell.........whats your real name:>)
- Skinny 10-31-2022 9:58 am [add a comment]
Asked Skinny.
- bill 10-31-2022 11:19 am [add a comment]