This is a quick and dirty mash-up of the classic screwdriver and rusty nail cocktails:
– Scotch & Orange Juice –
Essentially, it’s a poor-man’s Germain Scotsman. I love the combination of smokey scotch and orange juice with a hit of that elderflower flavor, but sometimes you just want to cut costs at a bar. And they may not have the right scotch or the elderflower liqueur, either. So this is a cheap substitute.
This refreshing cocktail is super easy to make. Here’s what you need to make it:
Add all ingredients except the ginger beer into a shaker with ice, and shake it the fuck up. Put as much mezcal in as you want! Pour over ice in a low ball glass. Fill it up between half and three quarters full. Then add ginger beer and stir before serving. Garnish with clementine rind to add a pop of bitter into the otherwise sweet drink, and rub the rind around the rim of the glass to get those citrus oils popping with each sip.
After eating Bangladeshi food across the street, a group of us walked into this joint for dessert.
The display case glowed with interesting shit I’d never tasted before.
We tried several items, most of which had similar flavors (dense, yet sugary and moist quasi-cakes), but each was packaged and presented with different textures, colors, etc.
The most interesting was this spherical thing that had smaller spherical things attached to it like sprinkles. In the middle was a pink colored paste of some kind. It tasted like a very light cheese cake.
This actually tasted like sweet cheese in a creamy cold broth.
But my favorite was this snaggle of deliciousness, which was essentially a honey-soaked funnel cake. It was crispy on the outside but juicy through and through. When biting down on it, the liquefied honey just oozed out like squeezing a dessert sponge. Yum!
PREMIUM SWEETS
3714 73rd St
Jackson Heights, NY 11372
My first foray into Bangladeshi food was a good one. A buddy of mine, who hails from Bangladesh, took me, my wife, and a few other friends here to give us a taste of the cuisine.
Many people, including Yelp, seem to lump this cuisine in with Indian food, but I was thinking the flavors of Bangladeshi food are more aromatic. The dishes have more of a floral “nose” to them (possibly some rose water in the rice dishes), and are less sweet than the Indian food that I’m familiar with. There is a similar earthy spice regimen to Indian, but Bangladeshi food is definitely distinct enough, even aside from the proteins (beef is generally not found in most Indian joints, and fish has a bigger presence in Bangladeshi food).
We tried a pair of rice dishes. One had goat as the protein, and was biryani style. Both came with hard boiled egg as well, but the one served with the goat had a breading over it that was really interesting. The goat meat was surprisingly tender and not greasy, though I preferred the chicken dish to a huge degree. The chicken was moist and tender (it was a leg), and the smaller grain rice that came with it had a “fried rice” quality that was really delicious.
The beef was super tender. It was roughly chopped, so you had to be mindful of bones, but the end product was a very “melt in your mouth” braised quality. The same goes for this chicken dish, which was cooked and prepared in a similar way:
The fish was interesting. While not my favorite, it was cooked properly and remained juicy, flakey and moist. The shrimp, on the other hand, was a bit overcooked and slightly grainy as a result.
All in this was a pretty great meal. There was more food too, that I didn’t shoot. We ate like kings and I think the bill came to about $14 each, including tax and tip. Awesome value.
I think the joint could benefit from a cleaner environment, however. Tables turn over very fast, as the place is super busy ALL THE TIME, so you get some grub leftover on the tables as a result. That being said, this is a no-frills joint, with food pre-prepared and ready to roll from under a glass counter where everything is kept on warmers. So go into it knowing that it is fast casual, not a fancy sit-down place. Also – eating with your hands is encouraged!
HAAT BAZAAR
3711 73rd St
Flushing, NY 11372
I rolled through Ocean Prime for a quick NYC Restaurant Week meal one night after work with a friend of mine. They were booked solid, so we grabbed a seat in the lounge area near the bar to eat. While the menu was limited to a small filet for restaurant week (in terms of beef), I figured it was a good opportunity to test-drive the steakhouse before going balls-deep with a big rib eye. Here’s what I thought:
Flavor: 9
The filet was delicious, and was cooked to an absolutely perfect medium rare. It had a good seasoned outside, and the inside was juicy and flavorful. While the outside wasn’t super crisp, it still managed to hold in all the juices.
I’m looking forward to heading back for a proper rib eye. I have to say… for a place to score an 88 on a test run with a severely limited restaurant week menu… I’m impressed.
Second trip: perfectly cooked rib eye. Similar notes regarding the sear, as the rib eye had a slight wetness on top. Otherwise absolutely delicious. With a bit more crisp on the edges, this would deb full points for flavor.
Choice of Cuts & Quality Available: 8
Three filets, two strips and a rib eye are offered here. There is no beef porterhouse. I have to take a few points for that. The menu indicates that all steaks are prime quality, but nothing is noted about aging. Perhaps a few more bone-in options would also beef up the selection here as well. But with consistent, top notch quality, it might not matter too much. Second trip: upgraded to 8/10.
Portion Size & Plating: 8
Portions are slightly smaller than most places for the price range of midtown steak joints. The plating is elegant and clean, nothing too fancy.
Price: 8
This is an expensive joint, with a small 8oz filet coming in at almost $50, however their most expensive steak is $57, a 12oz “bone-in filet,” so the range isn’t too wide. In any case, they do participate in NYC Restaurant Week, where they offer a three-course meal for $38 that includes an app, an entree, two sides and a dessert.
Bar: 10
This is a great bar for hanging out after work. The crowd is all suits from Bankville, USA, but the space is beautifully apportioned and you can watch the street from the well-lit seating arrangement.
Specials and Other Meats: 9
There’s lamb, chicken, and a pork porterhouse in terms of other meats. That’s a nice showing, especially considering that this place is a bit lighter on the beef selections and a bit heavier on the seafood selections. Also, on a second trip there were lots of specials read to us from all menu categories, including steak.
Second trip: 14oz strip steak with brie special. Upgraded to 9/10.
Apps, Sides & Desserts: 9
I had the Point Judith calamari, which was perfectly breaded and fried to a golden crisp, and drizzled with just the right amount of sweet chili sauce. It also comes with roasted cashews, which nails home the distinct Asian dimension to the dish.
My steak came with mashed potatoes and green beans for the restaurant week menu, so I got to taste a few items. Both were good, but nothing incredible.
The desserts, however, were a different story. I tried both the peanut butter mousse with chocolate ganache, and the carrot cake, which Ocean Prime is famous for at this point. Del Frisco’s has the lemon cake. Strip House has the chocolate cake. Ocean Prime has the carrot cake, which i shy far my favorite, and I DO love the lemon cake at Del’s. Typically, the cake is 10 layers high and a massive wedge. This restaurant week portion was just right for me, as I was already kind of full. The frosting had a great fall-spice to it, and the cake was moist without being too dense.
The full carrot cake slice from the dinner menu:
The peanut butter and chocolate pie was good too, but too sweet for my liking. It was light due to the mousse element, though, which is nice. It was also beautiful to look at.
Second trip: surf and turf appetizer of braised short rib and scallop was incredible. Perfectly executed.
Second trip: 99% meat in this crab cake. Lots of good crab flavor, nicely accented with a corn salad. This rivals Del Frisco’s.
Second trip: chop house corn. Very tasty, but I was expecting something more to it. Maybe the addition of some pancetta would do the trick.
Seafood Selection: 10
There’s a shitload of great looking seafood here. The menu is too extensive to list them all. I was able to try some of the scallops that my buddy ordered, and so far I’m impressed.
When I return, I’ll definitely be trying more seafood. I like the idea of a steak joint that really raises the bar on the seafood. A lot of places just do lobster and salmon, shrimp and oysters. They don’t go outside the box. Here it is a totally different seafood experience. And it is perfect place for dates: the men can eat their red meat, and the women can watch their figure with some seafood, because sexism rules.
Service: 10
Even in the busy and crowded bar area, we had excellent service. The first course came out fast, and the waitress, Jenny, was really nice and attentive. The fun part about sitting in the bar area is that they give you a free bowl of popcorn, which is wonderfully seasoned. The bread, by the way, is delicious. You get piping hot pretzel bread logs and bread with a soft, whipped butter. Excellent.
Ambiance: 9
While the main dining room is big and industrial looking, it still has a nice feel to it. It’s spacious, which is good, but it just lacks a little bit of character. One thing that’s cool is that you can view how the kitchen operates by peeking though the long glass window that is visible from the dining room. Upstairs there are some private dining areas, and the bathrooms are beautifully appointed. Second trip: I took more of the ambiance in and I am sold on it being a solid 9/10.
UPDATE 7/17/19
I recently returned to try some more stuff.
Steak Tartare
This was awesome. Up there with some of the best I’ve had. If tartare is your thing, then get this shit.
Lobster Mac & Cheese
This was incredible. I actually ate more of this than anything else the night we came back. Addictive!
Lobster Tails
These twin beauties tasted as great as they looked. You can’t go wrong on the seafood here.
Surf & Turf
Seared scallops with braised short rib? Yup. I loved this appetizer. Solid way to start a meal.
Mixed Sushi Rolls
Everything served on this platter was delicious but I kept hitting that thinly sliced wagyu beef roll. Amazing.
Crab Cake
If that sauce was spicy it would be on par with Del Frisco’s.
Assorted Sides
All great (especially the jalapeño au gratin), except they skimped on the cauliflower & broccoli.
Pork Porterhouse
This was nice. When comparing to Belcampo, this one fell a bit short. But it was by no means bad. Still probably a 7 or 8 out of 10.
Dry Aged Kansas City Strip
This bone in beauty brought a lot of earthy flavor to the table. Of the steaks we tried, this was the winner for sure. 9/10.
Dry Aged Rib Eye
This was less seasoned and had less aged flavor than the strip, but was still a great steak. 8/10.
Dessert Platter
As you may already know, the 10-layer carrot cake here is one of my favorite steakhouse desserts. They also served us a butter cake, which is also one of my favorite steakhouse desserts (but from Del Frisco’s).
OCEAN PRIME
123 W. 52nd St.
New York, NY 10019
I went to Church Street Tavern with my wife and the founder of The Dishelin Guide and the DishEnvy app to finally check out their acclaimed burgers. The talk is accurate. These burgers are fantastic! We tried two: The Wellington and the CST Burger.
Let’s start with The Wellington: the patty is topped with mushroom duxelles (french for chopped mushrooms, onions and shallots sauteed with butter and herbs), foie butter and a cheesy pastry crisp that mimics the puff pastry that typically surrounds a Beef Wellington dish.
You can see it sticking out the side here like a piss-clam tail, or a limp geoduck phallus.
I guess those words aren’t the best to use when describing delicious food, but that’s what comes to mind. Anyway, I was expecting the burger to be wrapped in the pastry, just like traditional Beef Wellington (pictured below), but that wasn’t the case.
The burger was good. It was cooked to a nice medium rare, and the toppings were delicious. The bun held up nicely, didn’t crumble and wasn’t too stiff.
The better burger of the pair, however, was the namesake CST (Church Street Tavern) Burger, which was topped with bacon-onion jam, aged cheddar, and arugula.
It was seved on the same toasted brioche bun, but this burger had a much better flavor to the meat, perhaps from better seasoning and searing. Cooked to a perfect, juicy medium rare, this burger really hit the spot. I’d definitely go back for another.
The big surprise of the evening, though, was this amazing porchetta sandwich that we saw on the menu.
It’s a nice, tender pork sandwich with sauteed spinach and melted Swiss cheese. There were even some crispy pork bits in there for texture. The spinach had a nice hit of garlic to it without having any chunks of the breath-killer hidden inside. And the Swiss was surprisingly tasty to me. I didn’t expect to like Swiss with Italian pork, but it worked. I highly recommend this sandwich.
The fries here are equally satisfying. They’re slightly more squat and thicker than most places, but they’re cooked perfectly and generously-yet-simply seasoned with salt and herbs.
The bar here is pretty nice too, and at happy hour you can get $4 select beers. I had a Session lager:
CHURCH STREET TAVERN
313 Church St.
New York, NY 10013
This Thai joint serves up “isan” style Thai food, which is generally saltier, spicier and more pungent with ingredients like fish sauce than the typical sweet Thai places you see around town. They still serve up an amazing sweet Thai iced tea, though:
This first plate is crispy beef with a tangy hot sauce. These were very similar to the dish I tried at Thai Select in Thai Town.
The Tom Yum soup was very good. It had a great acid base from the tomatoes, and it was spicy. The mix of seafood was fish balls, shrimp and squid.
Below was a crispy pork belly dish. This was heavily fish-sauced and spicy. It was really nice.
This platter below contained various meats, like head cheese, crispy pork, pork rinds, noodles and cabbage.
ZABB ELEE
75 2nd Ave.
New York, NY 10003
Japanese BBQ is some of the best shit around. Unlike Takashi in the west village, this joint offers all sorts of meats as well as fish. Takashi is just beef.
That’s pretty commendable of Takashi, but every once in a while I hunger for some pork. Yakiniku West delivered in what was essentially a “Bang Bang” meal, as we had just finished eating Thai food an hour or two earlier.
So we began our meat fest by kicking off our shoes, popping them into some cubbies and drinking some nice sake.
The starter plates came out. First was an agedashi tofu dish, and the next was a eggy pancake of sorts with seafood mixed in and topped with shredded bonito flakes. Both were good, but the pancake dish was top notch!
This first platter of meat came out that had a few different kinds of beef, including tongue, as well as pork belly and duck.
This shit cooked up nicely. Watch as it sizzles… “Tssssssss…”
We couldn’t stop there, not on a “Bang Bang,” so we grabbed a plate of chicken gizzards, mixed beef intestines (liver, tripe, stomach) and some extra tongue. Everything was delicious!
YAKINIKU WEST
218 E. 9th St.
New York, NY 10003
I recently went to a release event for Rockaway Brewery’s newest beer, “Meat in the Middle,” with the man behind The Dishelin Guide.
“Meat in the Middle” (4.8% abv) is a rauchbier that’s brewed with slow-smoked NY State barley. What makes it special and “meaty” is that it’s smoked with cherry wood at Brooklyn specialty butcher and sandwich shop, The Meat Hook.
The beer itself is pretty good. You get a hint of that smoke in there, with a malt-forward beer flavor. Very nice. I tried it in a flight of some other goodies. In this photo, it’s all the way on the left:
The porters and dark beers here are really fantastic:
After working up a little buzz, we hopped on one of the brewery tours and picked up some additional info about the brew process:
By then we were hungry, so we ventured upstairs to try some of the sausages that The Meat Hook was selling.
We tried both the Long Dong Bud and the Beet & Onion sausages.
Check out the color on the Beet & Onion. Incredible! It was really nice, and topped with a kale kimchi type of slaw that really made the flavors pop.
Long Dong Bud was topped with some shredded cheese, and a pineapple relish. It definitely had more of a traditional German type flavor profile, other than the relish.
We were torn on which we liked best. I went one way (Long Dong Bud), and Jay went the other (Beet & Onion). In any event, if you can get over to The Meat Hook and try these, I highly recommend them.
Ben Turley, a butcher from The Meat Hook, gave us a demo of how he breaks down a “rear quarter” of a cow – a beef shank (a back leg).
As he explained what he was doing, he trimmed off various specialty cuts within, like the oyster steak and merlot steak.
Here’s a shot of the oyster steak:
And some various other items like portions of the top round and eye of round.
He parted out the femur bone, too.
The coolest thing about this was that they were just slicing up parts of the lean beef sections and passing it around to eat raw, with just a little bit of salt on top. Awesome!
One of the thicker cuts benefited from just a quick, hot sear:
So this day was basically a dream come true. Good beer, Good food and a dead cow. And Ben basically has my dream job.
On my way out, I picked up a jar of this really crazy banana jam too, from Stagg Jam & Marmalade.
They had a table set up where you could try all four of their jams on crackers. This bacon jam has a hint of citrus and vanilla that really explodes with flavor.
ROCKAWAY BREWERY
46-01 5th St.
Long Island City, NY 11101
THE MEAT HOOK
100 Frost St.
Brooklyn, NY 11211
NOTE: THIS JOINT IS NOW CLOSED
NYC restaurant week now includes this joint at the One57 building on Billionaire’s Row, “The Back Room.” They offer a really great menu. The decor is beautiful and vast. It’s a huge place. Tables are wide and spacious. Very different from the usual situation in NYC.
The onion bread with garlic and herb cream cheese is a delicious way to start the meal here:
We also sipped on some really excellent cocktails.
The charcuterie board had five different styles of cured meat with some pickled items. I thought this was really generous. The quality of these meats was top notch, too. Coppa, cacciatorini, fennel sausage, soppressata, spicy nduja, lardon. The fat content was so soft and sticky that it was clinging to the bottom of my tongue like peanut butter. So good.
We also had the reginetti pasta, which are like little squiggly brain shapes that hold the sauce nicely in the convolutions.
For our main courses we went with the beef cheek and the quail. The beef cheek was braised in red wine to a perfect tenderness that still retained a nice juicy inside. It was served on a parsnip and rutabaga puree, and topped with crispy onions and a red onion jam.
My wife’s quail dish was nicely cooked and had good flavor, but it was slightly gamey. The quail was in no way bad. It just didn’t hit the same high mark as the beef.
Dessert was pretty great. Maybe restaurants in NYC are finally understanding that people want to see something different than tiramisu, creme brûlée, chocolate cake and fucking flan. First up was this cocoa toffee pudding with brulee’d bananas, salty cocoa nibs and malted coconut ice cream. Excellent.
We also had the meyer lemon zabaglione with whipped tea, lemon confit and earl grey ice cream. Very inventive and unique, and a nice bright way to end a meal.
The waiter, Ivan, was great. He even brought over a candle and complimentary glass of honeyed dessert wine for my wife since they knew it was her birthday (was mentioned on the Open Table reservation).
On a second visit I tried their two-course lunch for $32, along with a taste of a few other things that the rest of the table had.
First was this delicious grilled octopus.
The texture was perfect. While the chimichurri-esque green sauce was a bit bland, I did like it a lot with the octopus, and even with the table bread as well.
I went with the skirt steak for my main course.
The dollop of garlic butter on top really added a great flavor and creaminess to the cut. It was perfectly cooked to medium rare.
While the steak itself was a bit small, it did pack a ton of flavor. 8/10.
Here’s a look at the lobster roll on the lunch menu. I think it could use a bit more quality, large chunks of claw meat. The bread was solid, but I’ve had better lobster rolls elsewhere.
The duck leg confit was brilliant. So tender and juicy, and beautifully plated as well.
And speaking of beautiful plating, this bowl of fried oyster mushrooms with lemon are served with an edible chive blossom.
For dessert we sampled a trio of eclairs and a chocolate espresso cake, which was super soft, smooth and decadent. The texture was more like soft fudge or a thick custardy pudding.
Of the three eclairs, I liked the pink and red one the best. All three had great creamy fillings and were beautiful as well as tasty.
THE BACK ROOM AT ONE57
157 W. 57th St.
New York, NY 10019
