Category Archives: Restaurant Reviews

Italian, Press Reviews, Restaurant Reviews, West Village

Romagna Ready 2 Go

October 10, 2016 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

I was recently invited to an Instagram influencer and PR event at this little Italian joint in the village which was re-focusing its menu for the fall. I tried a few items and snapped pics for good measure.

Mushroom crostini: flavorful, but the topping was a bit too watery.

Sausage: absolutely delicious. I could eat a whole trey.

Pumpkin piadina: I wasn’t really a fan of this, which is a shame because it was the star of the show for the fall menu. It lacked flavor and the pumpkin was a bit too sweet for my savory tooth. It did have a nice texture, however, and the mushrooms were a nice addition.

We also tried some truffle french fries and truffle risotto as well, but I didn’t photograph those items. Both were very good and nice and robust with the truffle flavors.

ROMAGNA READY 2 GO
182 Bleecker St
New York, NY 10012

Brooklyn, Chinese, Press Reviews, Restaurant Reviews

Yaso Tangbao

October 9, 2016 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

Soup dumplings are some of the most amazing things to eat. That burst of thick, viscous deliciousness is like nothing else in the food world. So when two friends of mine hosted an Instagram event at Yaso Tangbao, a dumpling and noodle joint in Brooklyn, I was psyched. First, I captured this footage of the guys making the dumplings. Check it out:

Then, of course, I gorged my face off on this shit. There were three varieties of soup dumpling, the best of which was the spicy (with red powder on top).

These are some of the best I’ve tried. The pouches never ripped or stuck to the paper beneath – and the flavors inside were always robust and packing great depth.

We also tried some other fun stuff:

Along with a shitload of noodle dishes. The one with the meatballs was amazing. Those meatballs are really soft and tender, made with pork.

As far as straight up meat goes, this place also slings some killer ribs.

And while this whole fish dish isn’t on the menu (staff caught it the day before and served it to us special), one awesome thing at this place is a water cooler filled with soy sauce. Yup.

YASO TANGBAO
148 Lawrence St
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Carcass Club/Beast Feast, Chinese, East Village, Non-Steakhouse Steaks, Other Cuts, Press Reviews, Restaurant Reviews

The Tang

October 8, 2016 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

The Tang is a great little noodle bar on 1st Avenue at 7th Street. I was invited here for a PR event showcasing some of their current and forthcoming dishes. Everything I tasted was really fucking good, and, in fact, the noodle quality is probably the best I’ve had in town so far. They’re strong, thick, have a really nice texture and snap to them, and they’re really nicely flavored in all the dishes I tried.

The meats in all of these noodle dishes are outstanding, by the way. One had braised pork belly, one had sliced beef, and the other had ground meats.

Some of the soup noodle bowls are excellent too.

But this place is more than just noodles. One standout item was the sliced beef short rib. These babies are packed with a ton of flavor, and cooked so perfectly. You don’t see short rib presented like this too often, like a real cut of steak on a plate, so I am featuring it here for my steak reviews as well. Short rib can be fatty, and that’s why it is usually either grilled hard with tons of sauce, or braised. But here, it was leaner and notably excellent at medium rare temps, because it was cooked sous vide style for 20 hours. 8/10.

This place is really my speed, especially given this large format pork knuckle/shank dish that will be rolling out on the menu soon. It’s super soft and tender.

I also tried a sesame tofu dish, a salad with soft boiled egg, and some sliced, rolled chicken with chili oil.

THE TANG
120 1st Avenue
New York, NY 10009

Chinese, Downtown, Food Halls, Restaurant Reviews

Northern Tiger

October 4, 2016 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

This stand at Hudson Eats slings some decent dumplings and noodles.

My wife, a friend and I came here after a crazy chocolate event at ICE to get something a little savory to balance the palate.

We tried an order of their special kung pao chicken dumplings.

These were chock full of good quality chicken, but they were a bit over-sauced and dense. Good flavors though.

The next dumplings we tried were some pan seared pork and chive fuckers.

These were much better. They had great texture and contained the right balance of juices and meat inside. Very nice.

Finally, we tried an order of sour and spicy chicken noodles.

This contained two types of noodles: spaghetti-like clear “glass noodles,” and wide, flat noodles.

I think they could have used a hit of spice to them, but the chicken meat was high quality and the flavors worked. This place is worth a shot if you’re in the area, especially for the pan seared pork dumps.

NORTHERN TIGER
At Hudson Eats
225 Liberty St
New York, NY 10281

Flash Deals, Italian, Non-Steakhouse Steaks, Other Cuts, Restaurant Reviews, Union Square/Flatiron

Bocca

October 2, 2016 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

For less than $79, my wife and I scored this Groupon deal for Bocca, which gave us $120 to spend. In reality we probably paid about $68 for the Groupon, since we almost never buy them unless there is an additional discount code.

Anyway this Italian joint had some pretty interesting items on the menu. Here’s what we ordered:

Salmon Crudo

This shit was really fresh and clean. It was a great way to start this incredible meal.

Grilled Octopus Crostini with Chorizo, Kalamata Olives and Chic Peas

The octopus was perfectly cooked, and when I took a bite with a little bit of everything together, the flavors really exploded. Such an awesome Mediterranean dish.

Strozzapreti with Nduja

This was amazing. If you don’t know what nduja is, its a spicy, fatty and spreadable sausage product that lots of people eat with bread in southern Italy. Here, however, the geniuses rendered it down with tomatoes into a decadent sauce. Highly recommended.

Cacio e Pepe (Spaghetti alla Chitarra in Pepper and Cheese Sauce)

This was prepared table-side, and was absolutely delicious.

It’s a really simple dish, but sometimes that’s all you need for a winning food item. It’s no wonder this dish is all the rage in NYC.

Hanger Steak with Mushrooms

This fucker was awesome. Seriously. It was cooked to a perfect medium rare, and the selection of wild mushrooms (I think Hen of the Woods and Porcini) really brought out the earthy flavors of the beef, which happened to be black angus from Creekstone Farm. 9/10.

Another thing worth mentioning is this great beer they serve.

This is right in my wheelhouse, since it’s an unfiltered, super bubbly Belgian farmhouse wheat beer.

BOCCA
39E 19th Street
New York, NY, 10003

Italian, Midtown West, Pizza, Press Reviews, Restaurant Reviews

Angelo’s Pizza

September 30, 2016 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

Through all the years that I’ve lived and worked in midtown, I never once thought to venture into Angelo’s. It’s dumb/arrogant of me, but I always just assumed it was a tourist trap for the people going to see Letterman or Colbert next door. And being just a few streets up from Times Square and right on Broadway, I just assumed it was a shit show, like almost everything in Times Square. Boy, was I wrong.

While it may indeed get crowded at times due to the location, the pizza is definitely on point. They use a nice big coal-fired brick oven that heats up to 900 degrees.

The guys slinging the pizzas work with robot precision, and nearly every pie that comes out looks identical.

They’re not all square, obviously, and in fact these square pies are rolling out on the menu soon. The current pizza menu is quite diverse and full of really nice variations. The one that the guy was making above (at least in most of the pics) was a simple style pie with sauce, mozz, chunks of parm and basil. It was pretty good.

My friends at NYCFoodFOMO and BeFatBeHappy invited me here for an Instagram influencer event to sample and take pics of the food for promotional purposes.

The joint itself is category 1 in my pizza review taxonomy, which means that it’s a pie only place, with no sales by the slice. But it’s also a legit Italian restaurant as well with a fully stacked menu. With all that said, here’s what I tried:

There were two pizzas conceptualized by NYCFoodFOMO and BeFatBeHappy. One had sausage, roasted peppers and pepperoni, and the other had ricotta, garlic, bacon and red onions.

Here’s the first:

And the second:

Both were excellent, and the circular pies were more of a success than the square pies. I think if I had to choose one, the sausage, pepperoni and roasted peppers was the winner.

We also tried some pasta dishes. Three to be exact. The first was a nice and simple bowl of spaghetti and meatballs.

The meatballs were pretty good. Nothing can compare to mom’s, but these did get the job done.

Next up was a carbonara pasta dish with fettuccine and mushrooms.

Not bad! But it just needed a touch of salt. I guess the pancetta in the dish wasn’t as salty as expected.

Finally was a shrimp and pasta dish with added baked mozz on top.

Very nice. And then we moved on to dessert. Tiramisu, cheesecake and vanilla/chocolate mousse pie.

If you’re wondering who these folks are, they’re some of the crazy Instagram food people from the event. Check out the madness:

UPDATES 7/5/17 & 7/23/17

I finally made it back to try a classic style pie. Awesome.

It is now my go-to delivery pizzeria as well.

ANGELO’S PIZZA
1697 Broadway
New York, NY 10019

Filet Mignon, Fusion, Italian, Japanese, Midtown East, Non-Steakhouse Steaks, Press Reviews, Restaurant Reviews, Union Square/Flatiron

Natsumi Tapas

September 28, 2016 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

When I see something that’s marketed as Japanese-Italian fusion, the first thing that comes to my mind is Super Mario Brothers, one of the best video games ever released by Nintendo.

From http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net

But now, since having this meal, the next thing that comes to mind is Natsumi Tapas. Natsumi is the latest venture by Barbara Matsumara, and it focuses on small plates for grazing and larger plates for sharing. She consulted with Italian chef Andrea Tiberi and sushi chef Hiroyuki Nagao to create a dynamic menu that gets increasingly interesting the more you look at it. I was invited in for a press meal with Jay from The Dishelin Guide, so we got to taste a lot of stuff. Here’s what we had:

First, a nice pour of sake from this very cool bottle that houses the ice inside the center without touching the sake and thereby watering it down.

This place also mixes up some really nice cocktails too, by the way, like the EMW, which is made with shiso leaf, sake and gin.

We started with this filet mignon, which was served sliced, tataki style, with a ponzu, garlic and truffle sauce. The truffle and garlic really brought an awesome fusion flavor to an otherwise Japanese flavored dish. While this wasn’t a traditional “steak” in the sense of a steakhouse cut or portion size, I’m still going to score it since it was worth discussing. 8/10. I definitely recommend this dish.

Next up was the tuna tartare martini with avocado and caviar. The orange layer at the bottom definitely had some tobiko mixed in for a nice change-up in texture. Very smart. The mango and basil pesto sauce really made this pop with unorthodox and surprisingly good flavor combinations. Also recommended.

While the flatbread wasn’t exactly the pizza dough crust that I imagined (it was more like a puffy cracker), it did pack a lot of flavor. We tried the spicy tuna caviar flatbread. It wasn’t as much of a fusion as some of the others seemed to be, like the seared salmon flatbread, but it was really delicious nonetheless. If you’ve ever had “sushi pizza” before at some other restaurants, it is somewhat similar to that, and always a crowd-pleaser.

This bowl of green tea gnocchi with asparagus and capers in a light butter sauce was absolutely perfect. Definitely my favorite item of the night, by far. While it leaned a bit more on the Italian side, it was probably one of the better gnocchi dishes I’ve had in town. The green tea flavor was very mild, but the sauce was drinkable. I highly recommend this dish when you go here. Not only was it tasty, but it was also beautiful.

We finished our savory courses with the Squarano roll; seared tuna, seared salmon, kani, avocado, scallion, pepperoncini and green tea aioli. This was pretty tasty, and nicely nestled into the fusion realm with the addition of an aioli and pepperoncini from Italian cuisine. Really, you can’t go wrong with any of their special roll selections. They all looked great.

For dessert we tried the cheese cake tempura, which was nice and crispy outside, and soft like mashed potatoes inside. It had just the right amount of sweetness, and the berry compote on the plate was the perfect way to incorporate a sauce element.

Definitely give this place a shot. It just opened in March and the place was packed to the gills when we went on a Tuesday night at 7pm. The ambiance is comfortable, not too dim, not too bright, not too loud and very spacious, which is a welcome addition to the NYC Japanese restaurant world.

NATSUMI TAPAS
323 3rd Ave
New York, NY 10010

Indian, Midtown East, Press Reviews, Restaurant Reviews, Union Square/Flatiron

Kokum

September 28, 2016 Johnny Prime 2 Comments

NOTE: THIS PLACE IS CLOSED

I’m generally a pretty simple person when it comes to Indian food. I love a few of the popular and Americanized curries, and almost anything in the saagwala family (stewed spinach). In addition, Indian rice like Basmati is far and away the most superior rice that I’ve ever eaten. And who could pass up the amazing tandoori oven breads like naan, or delicious fried samosas? They’re amazing. But that’s such a limited, pinhole view of an incredibly vast and diverse cuisine.

Kokum opened my eyes and my stomach to items I would never think to order. Most of my experience with Indian food in NYC is centered around ordering delivery. What tends to happen is that I end up ordering the same things from the same places because I know that I will be satisfied. That’s lazy, and it precludes a lot of great stuff from ever hitting my palate. For example, I almost never order fish for delivery, from ANY kind of restaurant for that matter, not just Indian joints. I don’t know what it is, but I just never do it.

So when my wife and I came to Kokum for a press meal, we were pretty amazed at the inundation of flavors we were getting from a pair of Indian fish dishes that we probably never would have thought to order. I’ll get to those dishes in a moment, don’t worry. I just want to keep prattling on about Indian food a bit first, because I’m seeing the greatness of the cuisine with a fresh pair of eyes now; I’m re-motivated about the food, and really eager to dive deeper.

Kokum is a great place to do make that dive. It’s been open for three years, it’s captained by a Michelin starred chef, and it’s been reviewed favorably by top notch, respectable food critics from major publications.

Chef Hemant Mathur distinguishes Kokum from the plethora of other Indian joints in Curry Hill by representing four regions in southern India: Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra. With his newly re-envisioned menu, he offers some items that most casual diners like me don’t often see or wouldn’t necessarily think about when eating at Indian restaurants or ordering delivery.

So here’s a run down of our meal. I’m always eager to try beers from all over the world. These two imports, Kingfisher and Taj, were mild lagers with good flavor. I preferred the Taj for the slightly more malty and round flavor at the back end.

These little fried calamari-shaped doo-dads are multi-colored rice crackers. They come to the table at the start of the meal and are fun to snack on.

We were then presented with two shot glasses of warm tomato, tamarind and lentil soup, called rasam. This was delicious, and similar to a hearty minestrone, only with more complex spice flavors. The lentil flavor was strong here, but the soup was strained of any chunks or actual lentils, so it was velvety smooth.

We started with a pair of potato, cauliflower and pea samosas, These had a great crunchy pastry outer shell, and the inside was perfectly cooked and well seasoned.

Next up was lasoni gobi: fried cauliflower bites in a tangy sauce. Imagine a cross between General Tso’s chicken and buffalo chicken wings flavors. I was impressed! They had a crispy outside and the cauliflower was soft and tender inside. The sauce had bits of peppers and onions.

Fish poriyal came out next. This is flaky shredded fish with lime, shallots and mustard seeds, served on a banana leaf. My wife and I really loved this dish. It reminded me of some of the Vietnamese fried rice concoctions that my wife makes at home, only without the rice. Super healthy and very flavorful.

This beautiful web like thing is called appum. It’s a huge bowl-shaped rice crepe that you basically rip up and eat with curries.

Another vehicle for delivering delicious curry to your mouth is Kerala parotta, which is a multi layered bread that comes out steaming in a bamboo dumpling-style basket. Looks like onion rings with bits of potato mixed in. It’s cool bread.

This first curry is kori gassi. It’s a spicy and savory Mangalorean (an ethnic group from the south western coast of India) coconut chicken curry. This was by far my favorite item of the night. It had a great, rich and salty flavor with nicely balanced heat. The chicken was perfectly cooked, super tender, and varied by cut (both dark and white meat portions).

This next bowl is keerai masiyal: spinach, lentils and red chilies in a savory broth. Since this dish had a more soup-like consistency, it seemed to pair better with the rice. This is definitely a solid choice for you health-conscious eaters out there. It packs flavor and its satisfying, but its low on calories and fat content.

Our final entree was meen polichattu, which is roasted cod that’s wrapped in banana leaf with green masala. It comes with a side of diced, fried banana that serve as a starch element similar to a potato side. It had a nice high level of spice, was really tender and was completely devoid of any bones. Lovely!

We tried two items for dessert. The first was rasmalai. This is a cold dish of cheese balls in sweet reduced milk (like a vanilla custard soup) with pistachios. I liked this because it wasn’t too sweet.

In fact, the above cold dessert went really well when you combined it with the warm dessert, gulab jamun. These are warm cardamom dough balls in a honey-flavored and sugary sweet syrup. This was very sweet, so I loved going back and forth with the cheese balls to balance the flavors.

That about does it. I highly recommend trying this place out. I was really impressed and will definitely be back for more.

KOKUM
106 Lexington Ave
New York, NY 10016

Deli, Press Reviews, Queens, Restaurant Reviews

Ben’s Best Kosher Deli

September 26, 2016 Johnny Prime 2 Comments

You can probably count on your hands the number of real-deal, old school, authentic Kosher delis that are still standing in the same place where they started decades if not centuries ago. Ben’s Best is one of those places.

Located out in Rego Park, Queens, it lacks just one thing that places like Katz and Carnegie have in spades: a massive line of tourists that trails out the door and down the block. This place is a small, quaint neighborhood spot that has withstood the test of time and NYC real estate economics for over 70 years, since 1945.

But more importantly, Ben’s Best is serving some really high quality deli fare. This was, hands down, some of the best pastrami I have ever tasted.

Better than Katz, better than Carnegie, better than 2nd Ave. They use a proprietary secret blend of spices to make it their own and differentiate their product from other delis, but the execution is really where it shines. It was juicy, thinly sliced, not fatty and super fucking tender.

I usually prefer corned beef over pastrami, any day of the week, but this place flipped my preference on its head. In fact I even put together a sandwich with both on it, because I was so torn:

Pastrami on top, corned beef on bottom:

Absolutely magnificent, and it wouldn’t be a meal without some pickles and cole slaw:

And if that’s not what gets you going at a deli, then check out this platter of beef cold cuts:

On the far left (above) is rolled beef, something you really can’t find anywhere else that I know of. It’s a deli meat made from shoulder and rib meats that are rolled into a log and then sliced for sandwiches. It’s amazing. Going from left to right (below) we also have thin sliced brisket, roast beef and beef tongue.

That tongue was outstanding, by the way. It almost tasted like really good ham. So for all you Jews out there who keep Kosher but often wonder what ham tastes like, it tastes like Ben’s Best beef tongue.

This joint also does BBQ brisket sliders, which rival any smoke house I’ve been to in the city. Crazy good.

Ben’s is clearly a meat lover’s wet dream, but let me drop some other shit on you guys too. This is a plate of cabbage stuffed with chopped meat. It has an almost sweet flavor from the tomato and carrot sauce in which the meat is stewed.

Beef goulash on egg noodles. Simple and delicious. The meat was so incredibly tender.

Chopped liver:

A mix of sweet potato and regular french fries:

And of course Jewish Penicillin, aka matzoh ball soup:

I was invited here for an Instagram influencer event, so I ate for free, but I wholeheartedly recommend this place. It was a quick 30 minute subway ride on the R from midtown Manhattan, and the subway stop is directly below the restaurant. Not too bad. I’ll definitely be back for that amazing pastrami.

BEN’S BEST KOSHER DELI
96-40 Queens Blvd
Queens, NY 11374

American, Filet Mignon, Non-Steakhouse Steaks, Restaurant Reviews, Union Square/Flatiron

Metropolis

September 25, 2016 Johnny Prime Leave a comment

Metropolis is a new revitalized space that once served as the jazz lounge beneath Blue Water Grill in Union Square. It’s still owned and operated by the BR Guest restaurant group, and it seems that these folks can do no wrong when it comes to quality eating.

While there will inevitably be a few items at any place that a person may not like too much, I have to say that BR Guest delivers great food on a consistent basis, whether it’s Strip House, Dos Caminos, Bill’s or Blue Water Grill.

We came here to celebrate a birthday with another couple. My wife and I arrived early and ordered a drink at the bar, took in the live music and marveled at the amazing cocktail selections and quirky decor.

Speaking of drinks, my recommendation is to skip the Montauk seawater martini for two. If you’re like me, then you’re a martini purist. When I saw seawater I got excited, because I love that kind of brine for a martini. But this drink is made with sweet vermouth and garnished with a sweet pickled tomato and similarly pickled string bean. Maybe you like a sweet martini. I do not. Perhaps next time I can request a more savory version of this.

The whole ordeal is concocted table side, which is fun, but ultimately the two drinks were shallow. They could have filled it up a bit higher at $35 for the pair.

Okay so let’s get to the food. We browsed as we snacked on some delicious table bread with ricotta and olive oil.

This joint’s menu is purposefully heavy on the seafood, and for good reason. It’s below Blue Water Grill and the former chef, who happens to be from Per Se, does an amazing job with the fish dishes in particular. The first things that will pop out at you are the seafood tower selections and caviar items. Take a suggestion from me: the seafood towers are awesome.

That’s the “Flatiron” tower at $125 for 2-4 people. It contains two styles of oysters (six each of east and west), a dozen Little Neck clams, a char grilled octopus tentacle, seafood ceviche, a king crab leg, a half dozen mussels in tomato sauce and a whole lobster.

We also shared the surf and turf tartare. This was a bit small and underwhelming, but certainly not bad by any means.

We ended up going with two fish items and two meat items for our entrees. Let me first address the meat, since that’s what this website is all about. The filet mignon was perfectly cooked to medium rare, but unlike Strip House, it lacked that external char that I love so much. On the other hand, it was sauced with a really savory bacon reduction that blew us away. 7/10.

The steak came with this little skillet of spinach that was topped with brulee’d cheese. Very nice.

The real winner is the steak sandwich. It’s made with sliced rib eye steak that was cooked sous vide style in 45-day dry aged beef fat. Then it’s topped with charred onions and roasted tomato, and Velveeta wiz for that authentic Philly flare. Fucking fantastic. Get it.

It’s served with waffle cut potato chips (crisps, if you’re European). These were okay. I think I would have preferred some standard shoestring French fries instead.

Now for the fish. Hands down my favorite item of the night was the cod. It was served with an airy, creamy butter sauce and nicely roasted veggies. Then it was topped with a little circle of puff pastry.