First, check out my Ride & Review video HERE:
Cellar 36 is a small wine and tapas bar located in Chinatown owned and operated by the same folks behind The Ten Bells, which I love. Like Ten Bells, Cellar 36 offers a great happy hour deal that includes $20 carafes and $1 oysters. We went for it.
I definitely recommend this spot, and I’ll definitely be back!
Cellar 36
36 Market St
New York, NY 10002
First, check out my Ride & Review video HERE:
Carlota is a small tapas and vermouth bar on Orchard just above Canal. It’s a great spot for sips and snacks, and it’s a sister restaurant to Bar Belly, just next door.
We tried a lot of stuff, so there’s a photo dump below. Everything we had was excellent.
Here’s the menu:
Jamon and Tomato Bread to begin:
These squid ink croquettes were killer.
Cockles with chorizo – get extra bread for that amazing broth.
Awesome lamb chops.
Delicious taters.
And Basque style cheesecake was on the house!
Next time I want to try the chorizo sandwich.
CARLOTA
14 Orchard St
New York, NY 10002
First off, check out my Ride & Review video HERE:
My wife took me here for my birthday to try the Vaca Vieja (old dairy cow, popular in Spanish food). Here’s what we had:
Empanada with octopus and cheese inside. Really nice. The crust reminded me of pot pie dough.
Fried squid on a bed of fried zucchini. This was excellent!
Mussels with a pimento broth.
Wild mushrooms with sliced grapes and goat cheese. Totally unique and delicious.
As a mid-course we had this “Bomba Rice” with squid ink and squid, both on top and mixed into the rice. Amazing.
The steak was a cry-aged 38oz tomahawk for just $108. Crazy! This would be over $160 in a midtown steak joint.
It came with fries too, which were awesome.
The steak had both great flavor and great aroma, and was probably the best version of Vaca Vieja I’ve had so far.
I give this an 8/10 because it was slightly overcooked on the outside and slightly undercooked on the inside.
Dessert was a crepe filled with berry cream and served with yogurt ice cream. Really nice and refreshing.
I will definitely be back here again. I should note that they also have a great selection of Spanish imported beer.
TOMINO TABERNA GALLEGA
192 Grand St
New York, NY 10013
Once again my friend Ruben absolutely nails it with his third restaurant, Emilia. Check out this quick video of some of the dishes we tried:
I can’t wait to go back and try more stuff. He is still in the process of perfecting the burger (he’s working on the bun), so I’ll definitely try that again.
Favorite items so far: artichoke with soy cured egg and crispy sunchokes, red snapper, and monkfish liver mousse.
EMILIA BY NAI
174 1st Ave.
New York, NY 10009
This high end tapas restaurant serves some of the best Spanish food I’ve had outside of Spain. Jose Andres really deserves all the praise he gets.
We started with some nice cocktails, which, in hindsight, I wish we had at the bar downstairs (Bar Mar), instead of at our table.
In any case, great cocktails!
For the smaller bites we tried, the stars were Jose’s Tacos (jamon with nori taco shell and caviar), and the tartare in a fried shiso leaf.
The Philly cheesesteak bites were nice too.
For medium sized courses, we had the Spanish octopus and fideua (paella made with pasta instead of rice). That squid ink sauce was outstanding, and it might have been the best dish of the entire trip to Chicago.
For our main, we had the 32oz aged domestic wagyu “chuleton” rib eye. It was slightly overcooked on the edges, and for being something like 100+ days dry aged, I didn’t get much of that flavor. It was really tender and tasty though. 8/10.
This came with a side of delicious whipped potatoes. So smooth.
For dessert, we had their delicious honey cake with grapefruit sorbet. They even stenciled the words “Happy Birthday” onto the plate for us.
A very pricey meal, but delicious!
BAZAAR MEAT
20 N Upper Wacker Dr
Chicago, IL 60606
I popped into this joint with some friends mainly to try a domestic wagyu strip they recently put on the menu, but everything we had here was great. This place serves up smaller bites and tapas style dishes. Some of the highlights were the prawns, the potato cake with uni on top, the beef tartare and the stuffed chicken wings.
The star of the show was 24oz of 9/10 deliciousness. The “thrice cooked chips” that came with it were absolutely perfect.
The au poivre sauce really wasn’t needed, but both that and the roasted garlic really made the flavors pop.
For dessert, the mille feuille with cinnamon brown sugar cream was the big winner, but the mousse with granita and meringue was a nice way to cleanse the palate at the end of the meal.
WILDAIR
142 Orchard St
New York, NY 10002
This joint has two names and serves two types of cuisine: Manchego serves tapas, and Koko serves ramen. My wife and I tried a couple of items from each menu.
TAPAS
The octopus was awesome. Perfectly cooked, nicely seasoned.
The calamari was meh. A little dried out.
RAMEN
The ramen was pretty good. Not among the top tier, but good enough that if I was ever in the area again, I’d go back to try the tonkotsu. The main reason I tried their spicy chicken miso ramen was because the menu said their tonkotsu was also chicken based broth, but with char siu pork in it. I was confused, and didn’t feel like asking questions since the service was crazy slow (they were slammed).
The salmon ramen was light. It was a shio style chicken based broth.
MANCHEGO / KOKO RAMEN
375 Marlborough Rd
Brooklyn, NY 11226
Amigo is a casual but high quality tapas joint that’s owned and operated by Chef Ruben Rodriguez from Nai Tapas Bar (one of the best Spanish joints around).
My buddy Mike, my wife and I tried almost the entire menu, so I’ll just get right into it. But this was easily one of the best meals I’ve had this year.
First up: cocktails. The espresso martini and wasabi infused scotch cocktails were awesome.
Octopus and shrimp ceviche:
45-day dry aged rib eye steak tartare – this was one of the top bites of the night.
Shrimp tacos:
Bacalao – fried cod tacos. These were also a top bite of the night.
Mango salad:
Eggplant:
Braised pork cheek. This was insane. So tender:
Watch how easily it gets pulled apart (about 17 seconds into the slide show):
This savory corn pudding was delicious:
Pork belly taco:
The oxtail tacos de birria were another top bite.
I drank that entire cup of dipping broth.
The lime ice cream granita was off the charts – another top item:
And these chocolate filled churros were perfectly paired with that espresso martini I mentioned earlier.
I can’t wait to go here again. So damn good!
AMIGO
29 2nd Ave
New York, NY 10003
My wife and I finally tried this spot. It’s been getting very popular lately in the food scene, mainly because of the crispy shrimp heads seen here:
They paired nicely with the house hot sauce.
They’re delicious! But so are the other items they offer, like the mussels escabeche:
The fried skate wing:
And the piri piri chicken with french fries:
Fries were perfect, chicken was juicy! Great cocktails as well.
We’ll definitely be back to try the Manila clams and a few other items that looked tasty.
UPDATE! Clams were pretty good, but I probably wouldn’t order them again in terms of portion size.
These Louisiana white prawns were excellent. I would definitely order them again. There were five on the plate.
CERVOS
43 Canal St
New York, NY 10002
This nice wine bar in the Lower East Side has an awesome happy hour deal that includes $18 carafes of red, white or rose along with dollar oysters in three varieties, every day from open until 7pm. On weekends they open at 3pm so my wife and I popped in to try a bunch of stuff. We were the first ones at the bar. This is what one side of it looks like:
The wine was delicious.
And so was this tomato flavored brandy:
For bites, we did two dozen oysters (eight of each variety, all nicely cleaned and fresh);
Steak tartare (this was really nicely prepared – one of the better tartares I’ve had);
And boquerones/anchovies.
Everything was great, and I can’t wait to go back for more.
THE TEN BELLS
247 Broome St
New York, NY 10002
