My wife and I popped in here before seeing “Darkest Hour” at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas (great flick, and too bad that the theater is closing down in a month due to high rent). The place was jam-packed at 5:45pm, but luckily my wife had a reservation locked in.
Our movie was at 6:35, so we wanted to eat quick. We ordered our drinks and pastas at the same time, and they came out within three minutes.
I had the spaghetti carbonara, which was made the right way with no cream and a runny egg.
Enjoy the yolk porn:
It was made with guanciale (pork jowl) bacon, which added nice salt content to the dish without actually using salt.
My wife had the fettuccine pesto, which had a really nice, fresh flavor to it. Delicious, though a bit garlicky.
Everything was great, but the prices were a bit steep. All in, with tax and tip, for just two drinks and two pasta dishes, we were at $95 and change. That’s pretty steep! The interesting tidbit: This was one of the fastest meals we ever had in NYC. We were in and out within 20 minutes, like a horny teenager at a whore house.
UPDATE! This veal parm a la vodka was incredible. Easily in my top dishes of 2019.
Mannino’s is a local Italian joint near my parents’ house on Long Island. It’s gotten a lot of buzz in the last few years, and the food is pretty great. I’ve been there several times, but this time I decided to document the meal.
We started with octopus salad:
Stuffed and fried zucchini blossoms:
And an order of fried calamari:
The fried calamari was a bit on the small side in terms of portion size, but if you’re taking it down all by yourself, then it’s probably just the right amount. The squid was fried to a nice crisp, but still tender on the inside.
The zucchini blossoms were stuffed with ricotta and were a little more dense than I expected, but still tasty nonetheless. I wished there was four in the order, since we had a table of four. We made it work, however.
The octopus salad was good. The squid was tender, and the acid from the citrus cut nicely across the dish.
For my entree, I had pork parmesan. I’ve been dying to dig into some of the incredible looking bone-in chicken parm dishes I’ve been seeing lately in NYC, so this pork version was the perfect way to get my fix.
The meat was incredibly tender, pounded flat and fried up to a crisp. Good cheese coverage and melt, and the sauce was delicious. Great dish.
My wife had the beef braciola. This is beef that’s pounded flat and rolled up with cheeses, pine nuts, cured meats and raisins. Really nicely executed.
Get over to Mannino’s if you live in the area and haven’t been there yet. And keep an eye out for their tomahawk steak for two; they have it on special some nights.
MANNINO’S
1575 New York 27A (Montauk Highway)
Oakdale, NY 11769
My wife and I came here to shoot photos for Instagram and try out some of the tasty cuts of beef they have on the menu. Here’s what we thought:
Flavor: 8
Rib Eye: 9/10
This baby packed the most flavor and tenderness. They nailed the cook temperature as well, and it had a great crust on the edges.
We left nothing behind. This came out with a truffle butter “sauce” that was really decadent and flavorful. More like drawn butter than a sauce, but either way it was not needed due to the greatness of the beef. Their standard steak sauce is like a very good cocktail sauce (tomato- and horseradish- based).
Porterhouse: 7/10
This baby came out at a solid medium as opposed to medium rare, but it still had great flavor and a really kickass crust.
I think this steak would have tied or even perhaps overtaken the rib eye had it been cooked properly.
We ordered the cherry peppers and onions “sauce” for this, but it turned out to be regular bell peppers, and not much of a sauce (more like a side item). Skippable.
Choice of Cuts & Quality Available: 8
You’ve got all the basic steakhouse cuts here, plus a few budget steaks. Nothing too complicated. All steaks are dry aged in house, and USDA prime grade.
Portion Size & Plating: 10
Portions are large, and especially bountiful given the price point. Our ceviche appetizer was pretty big considering some of the dainty portions we’ve been seeing lately for nearly anything that isn’t an entree.
Price: 9
The prices here are considerably less (by $5 to $10 per steak) than most midtown rival steak joints. Our bill would have come to about $250, which I thought was fair for two drinks, an appetizer, a rib eye, a porterhouse for two, a side, two desserts and two coffees. In fact I’d say that’s a steal.
Bar: 7
The bar here is small, but it greets you warmly as you enter the joint. The bartender mixes a good martini and there’s a healthy selection of nice, affordably priced wines.
Specials and Other Meats: 7
There were no specials read to us, but, then again, I didn’t ask since I knew what I wanted before I even entered the joint. They do offer veal, lamb and chicken by way of alternative-meats.
Apps, Sides & Desserts: 8
Ceviche
This Peruvian mixed seafood ceviche had a nice squid ink and citrus base that really made it stand out from other ceviche dishes I’ve had in the past. It contained shrimp, mussels, fish and scallops.
Truffle Creamed Corn
Sorry, no pic. This was tasty, and had a nice bread crumb crust, but it was light on truffle flavor compared to the butter sauce mentioned above, and the cheese baked into it was a bit grainy at times.
Banana Cream Pie
This was great. Smooth, creamy, not too sweet, and just the right amount. I really liked this.
Chocolate Cremeaux
This dessert, on the other hand, didn’t quite deliver. The chocolate was a bit too dense overall, and I was expecting something more creamy and mousse-like. To their defense, I do not really know what a “cremeaux” is.
Seafood Selection: 10
There’s sushi, sole, salmon, tuna, sea bass, shrimp and trout on the seafood entree menu here. That’s pretty impressive! From the ceviche that I tried, I would say that these guys know their way around fish. Perhaps ordering a seafood entree to share as an appetizer is a good move.
Service: 10
The service here is fantastic. The waiters are attentive but not in your face all the time. The food is paced out properly and no one is waiting around or rushed.
Bread is pretty standard; sliced baguette or Italian bread style, with regular butter.
Ambiance: 9
The space here is beautiful, and the dining room has a few nooks and crannies where you can achieve a more private feel if needed.
The entrance on Tudor City Place is very quaint and welcoming, and it feels like you’re stepping into someone’s apartment building.
TUDOR CITY STEAKHOUSE
45 Tudor City Pl
New York, NY 10017
I dropped into this Vietnamese joint for a quick bite when I was on my way to pick up a Christmas gift for my wife. I was wearing a nice shirt, having just come from work. Naturally, as a stain-magnetic asshole, I was worried about splashing pho all over myself. So instead of ordering soup, I went with egg rolls and banh cuon.
Both were decent, and it’s funny how similar both the menu and restaurant set up is to Thai Son, which I believe is a sister restaurant to this joint down by the Civic Center that my wife and I used to frequent when we lived nearby. In any case, not a bad spot, but also not an amazing spot. It’s good for a Viet food fix.
A few months ago I had this wild idea that I would like a steak with an aggressively spicy Chinese flavor profile of chili oil, Szechuan peppercorns, cumin and garlic. Then suddenly I saw a menu item pop up at the Lobster Club with a strikingly similar list of ingredients, and the steakhouse Blu on Park is closing, making way for an Asian steakhouse which, perhaps, will feature something similar. Without wanting to wait for the new restaurant, and without having to drop bank and fight for a table at Lobster Club, I struck out to make my own, to turn my dream into reality.
I started out with one of my Piedmontese strip steaks because (1) they’re not dry aged, so I’m not competing with any other flavors, and (2) they’re cheap enough so that if I fucked it up, I wouldn’t feel so bad about it.
So what the fuck did I do?
Marinate the shit with chili oil, garlic oil, minced garlic, Szechuan peppercorns, Szechuan pepper oil, cumin, Chinese five spice and sesame oil.
After a few hours (or a few days if you want the flavors to really penetrate the meat), and after allowing your meat to get up to room temperature, dry off your steak with paper towels and season it all over with kosher salt, cracked black pepper, garlic powder, a touch of Chinese five spice and cumin (those last two ingredient are potent, so a little goes a long way). If you have fresh chilies, cut up a few and toss those in as well.
Pour the marinate into a pan and start bringing the fucking heat. Once the pan is screaming hot (but not smoking up the joint), toss that steak in. Now throw in some duck fat (or butter if you don’t have duck fat, but tracking down some duck fat is 100% worth it to bring home all the flavors).
Once the steak sticks to the bottom of the pan, tip the pan and spoon the liquids over the top of the steak as the bottom side cooks up to a nice brown crust. After three minutes of this, flip and repeat. Once finished, remove the steak and let it rest before slicing. Here’s a video of the process:
Now throw a pint of leftover rice from your Chinese take out into the pan. You know – the box of shit that’s been in the back of your fridge all week. Mix all the oil and duck fat into the rice, and spread the rice out across the pan. LEAVE IT. Let it get crispy as fuck on the bottom without burning.
Once that’s done, plate the rice, slice up your steak, and top your rice with the steak. I did a fancy slicing technique for presentation, but you don’t have to get all crazy with it.
That’s about it. Enjoy, assholes! Oh and pro-tip: you can remove the peppercorns before frying up the rice. I didn’t do this because I like the numbing quality to them.
I took my wife to The Aviary as an early Christmas present. I booked the five course “Cocktails & Canapes” tasting menu dinner about two weeks in advance with a $100 deposit. The cost is $165pp, with an 18% gratuity added at the end (and tax, of course).
That’s crazy expensive, but this is truly a unique drinking and dining experience. I drank and ate things I never would have even thought about. In hindsight, five cocktails was aggressive (but awesome). I think when I go back, I will just order a la carte.
Here is the entire menu, but I will highlight what was selected for us below in the review:
AMUSE
The first thing to come out was an “amuse” drink – a small shot of tastiness that involved lime, rum, and mint.
A few moments later, our first round of cocktails came out with the first course of food.
COURSE ONE
Drinks: Micahlada (left – and yes, that is spelled correctly) and Zombie Panda (right)
Of these two, the Micahlada was my favorite. This is The Aviary’s take on a michelada (beer, spices and tomato juice), made with soy, coriander, Japanese whisky and Evil Twin beer. The Zombie Panda was tart from the lemon, lychee and pisco, and filled with frozen spheres of raspberry juice to sweeten it up.
Food: Pineapple Two Ways
This was a nice way to get the taste buds popping. That brown stuff at the bottom was a mole sauce. I liked it a lot, but my wife wasn’t too taken with it. The black mint garnish was tasty and went well with the watermelon radish and passion fruit.
COURSE TWO
Drinks: How Does Snoop Dog Use Lemongrass (left) and Mimosa (right)
The mimosa was nice because the fruit juice was frozen into ice cubes, so the drink becomes sweeter and more smooth as it sits.
The idea behind the Snoop drink is that Snoop Dogg ends everything with “-izzle” when he talks/raps, so there is a “swizzle” made out of lemongrass, which is used to mix the drink together:
Food: Kampachi Ceviche
This was bright, light and savory, pulling in southeast asian flavors from Thai green curry, heart of palm and coconut. I really enjoyed the briny broth and the coiled peels of red pepper for spice.
COURSE THREE
Drink: Heart of Stone
This was the best drink of the night, and you get about six glasses out of the container. That container is filled with bourbon, tea, Fresno chili, pistachio and peach. As it sits there, the flavors infuse deeply into the bourbon, so each time you refill the glass it tastes a little different. More spices come out, more sweetness too. Amazing.
Food: Pork Belly Curry
This dish was really good, but it could have been excellent with a crunch element. I think the iceberg lettuce discs were supposed to be that element, but they fell short just a bit. Perhaps a fried shrimp chip or crispy egg roll wrapper would do the trick. But the pork belly curry itself? Awesome. The banana and cashew are excellent compliments to the savory.
FROM THE CHEF
Chawanmushi
They’re experimenting with “all times of day” food here at The Aviary, so this is meant to be a breakfast item. It’s velvety smooth, and the smoked abalone within makes you think you’re eating bacon. The pops of flavor from the pickled huckleberries really brighten and balance this seafood porridge custard dish.
COURSE FOUR
Drink: Memphis Half Step
These glasses come to the table upside down on a charred piece of oak cask, filled with smoke. The aroma is awesome. This absinthe and rye cocktail is super smooth with a hint of sweetness.
Food: A5 Miyazaki Wagyu Rib Eye
Clearly my favorite food item of the night. The meat was buttery soft, and the grilled romaine with puffed rice was a great textural pop to go with it. That yellow sauce is a yuzu mustard. Possibly the greatest mustard ever. 10/10. Wish I had 16 more ounces of this.
COURSE FIVE
Drink: Boom Goes The Dynamite
This was sweet and warm, almost like a port or brandy. It was made with rum, vanilla, violet and rooibos… and dry ice for the smoke.
Food: Blueberry
Milk chocolate, violet and buttermilk sorbet make this dessert extra decadent. There were some more spheres of raspberry ice on the plate too, rounding out the meal with a call back to the very first cocktail (Zombie Panda). Really nice.
THE OFFICE
After dinner, our waiter Preston took us on a short tour of The Office, the speakeasy behind The Aviary bar staging area (which looks more like a kitchen than a bar).
Here’s what the inside of The Office looks like:
They have a cabinet filled with really old spirits that you can order as well. Super rare.
I will definitely be back to try this place, as well as the Aviary again. So many interesting sounding drinks and food items to try, like the “Science AF,” which looks like a chemistry set, or the “Wake & Bake,” which is a pillow filled with smoke and a drink made with orange, everything bagel, coffee and rye. I snapped a photo of it before they opened the bag filled with smoke:
THE AVIARY
Mandarin Oriental
80 Columbus Circle at 60th Street
New York, NY 10023
My wife and I picked up a Momento air fryer from Groupon. We are really impressed with how it works.
There’s no permeating smells throughout the apartment, no greasy end products on the food, and overall a really great crisp on everything we’ve tried so far.
My wife made egg rolls in the fryer first. They came out perfectly. Again no grease, as it only uses about a tablespoon of oil.
Next up we took some floppy leftover turkey skin from thanksgiving and crisped it up for a pasta, spinach and turkey dish.. Crunchy like potato chips!
Then we tried tots (along with some duck skin that had been refrigerated overnight after cooking). The tots went directly from frozen to crispy in just 20 minutes. Awesome.
Next up we “fried” some frozen dumplings. Another success.
Finally, we tried chicken wings. All I did beforehand was thaw them out from frozen, and toss with some flavored oils and spices. These took just 20 minutes in the air fryer, and they came out perfectly cooked, tender inside, crispy outside, and juicy as fuck.
My wife and I went to Prune for brunch. We started off with some nicely crafted Bloody Mary drinks (which come with a Red Stripe beer back).
Mine was made with gin and garnished with a pickled egg, and my wife got a vodka based one with some southern spices, caper berries and pickled beans. I actually mixed my beer into the bloody when I was about halfway done, to make what was almost like a michelada.
For my entree, I had the famous fried monte cristo sandwich (ham, turkey, and cheese, breaded and deep fried). It was amazing – like a French toast sandwich. It came with two eggs and a berry jelly.
That coil of sausage we ordered as an extra side. Home made lamb sausage to be exact. It was incredible.
While the bill was a bit steep, we were satisfied and the food was delicious.
Incase you’re wondering, those are little licorice schnauzers that come with the bill.
A food Instagram buddy of mine, @NYCFoodFOMO, set up an “influencer” dinner here, so I was able to try a bunch of stuff. I was really impressed with the meats. It was difficult to fit this review into my standard 10-category format, as some sections just didn’t pan out like they would for a larger steakhouse. With that in mind, you should focus more on the flavor category, as well as the specific notes I made about other food items. Base your decision to go here on the substance and “meat” of the review, as opposed to the total number. I really loved every single item that I ate here, and I will definitely be back again. Anyway, check it out:
Flavor: 9
Porterhouse: 8/10. This baby is dry aged for 50 days, so it eats really soft with with a nice outer crust texture for contrast.
The aged flavor was on the milder side, but I really enjoyed it.
Both the tenderloin side and strip side were perfectly cooked and tender.
Miyazaki Sirloin: 10/10. Look at this gorgeous slab of beef.
I mean, it’s rare that you find beef that’s really from Japan, so this is a special situation. They cook and serve this very simply – almost like a sushi dish – with ginger and wasabi.
It packs a lot of flavor, and is incredibly tender. A really nice treat.
Choice of Cuts & Quality Available: 7
You don’t have the biggest selection here (porterhouse, strip, off-menu filet, and wagyu sirloin), but the sirloin is highly marbled Miyazaki; the filet is topped with tons of uni; and the other two cuts are dry aged for 50 days. They are in serious need of a rib eye, however.
Portion Size & Plating: 9
Portions are fairly normal here for the pricing, but the plating is gorgeous. Dishes are served in a Japanese aesthetic.
Price: 8
The prices can get steep. This surprised me for a steakhouse outside of midtown Manhattan. That’s the price you pay for high quality beef, though, and the Miyazaki is actually pretty fair compared to other places I’ve seen it.
Bar: 6
There’s not much of a bar scene to speak of, but the cocktails are certainly well crafted. I had a spin on an Old Fashioned, and I loved it.
Specials and Other Meats: 9
They offer an off-menu filet mignon that’s topped with tons of uni. I didn’t try it, but I’ve heard mixed reviews. I did, however, try their lamb and duck. Both were excellent, and some of the best I’ve ever had. No shame in taking a break from beef to indulge in these two dishes. Hell, they even work as shared apps if you want.
Apps, Sides & Desserts: 10
We tried a delicious trio of apps. First was the wagyu and uni roll. This is similar to the item served over at Takashi, with the accompanying shiso leaf and nori paper.
Next up was the uni shooter with poached egg, salmon roe and truffle oil. Delicious, smooth and decadent. I could slam a dozen of these no problem.
Last but not least, the crab cakes. These were generously meaty with a nice lightly breaded crust. Lovely.
Worth noting here: two of the dishes came with these amazing potato cake sides made of dozens of thinly sliced potato. It was buttery, salty and delicious.
Seafood Selection: 9
There’s a healthy amount of seafood on the menu here, as this joint also serves up some killer sushi. We tried a few rolls and loved them all. No pics though.
Service: 10
The service here is outstanding. Everyone is attentive, yet respectful of your space and privacy.
Ambiance: 8
Beautiful rustic wood tones make for a very cozy, warm and inviting atmosphere. I really liked the open view into the kitchen on the main dining floor. While the restaurant is long and narrow, they make good use of the space. And like a traditional steakhouse, there is a private dining room available downstairs, which is where we ate.
I stopped into Yama for their big bowl, which is a tonkotsu pork broth with tons of super tender braised pork belly and pork jowls.
While pricey at $20, it’s very big. The egg was an extra $2.
There’s a sweetness in the broth from the corn, so extra spice is recommended. I really enjoyed this, and will definitely go back (probably for the normal sized bowl, since I couldn’t finish this bucket).
Enjoy the yolk porn:
