Tag Archives: wine

Cellar 36

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

The Ten Bells

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

D’Espana

Despana is a little wine shop, gourmet Spanish grocery, and tapas/pintxos bar in Soho, all rolled into one. My wife won a wine tasting here in a silent auction, so last night we went in to give it a shot.

We tried six different wines from Spain that utilized grape varietals that I have never tried before. All were great. I’m not a wine snob by any means, but I do appreciate the good stuff and I know it when I taste it.

Speaking of tasting good shit, the snacks here are delicious.

That lean muscle lomo on the bottom right side of the charcuterie board was amazing. And that sous vide octopus? BUTTER!

Give this place a shot if you’re in the area.

D’ESPANA
408 Broome St
New York, NY 10013

Le Petit Rooster

NOTE: THIS PLACE IS NOW CLOSED!

This french joint just opened about two months ago with a really creative and unique menu. There were about eight starters that I wanted to try, but I ended up settling on three.

Black Garlic, Cynar & Bone Marrow Escargots

Incredible. The flavors, when combined, almost tasted like a really good balsamic. I’ve never really had snails like this before. Delicious.

Whiskey French Toast Foie Gras

This also had a cherry compote on it (on the toast in the background), along with some cocoa nibs and flake salt. So good. Really enjoyed this dish.

Prawn Escabeche

These massive head-on prawns were delicious. The spicy black garlic sauce really made them pop.

For the entree, we went with this 50-day dry aged cote de boeuf.

It comes with some tangy bone marrow and crispy fried onions, but what makes this stand out is the additional dry aging that they do in house. They get the meat at 28-days from Pat LaFrieda, but they age it for more time on site. I always find that this makes for a better aged flavor. 9/10.

We paired this with the schmaltz tater tots, which were fucking awesome.

We also had the purple and green asparagus, which was a special for the day. It had caviar and a fried/poached duck egg on top, along with a tangy hollandaise sauce.

For dessert, we took down this nice bread pudding.

This joint doesn’t have a full liquor license yet, but they do offer some creative amari type light cocktails, and a nice wine and beer list. I highly recommend this place. I know I’ll be going back to try the other apps that I wanted, along with some duck, chicken and pasta.

LE PETIT ROOSTER
491 Columbus Ave
New York, NY 10024

Nai Tapas Bar – Revisited

I recently revisited one of my favorite tapas and wine bars: Nai Tapas Bar. They’ve expanded into a two floor location, now on 2nd Ave at 5th Street (they moved from their old location on 1st Ave near 11th Street).

They offer an $89 chef’s tasting menu, which only jumps to $110 with their generous, high quality wine pairing pours for each course (and then some).

Not only is this a great deal, but it’s one of the best tasting menus I’ve had in years. Here’s how it went down.

We were met with a heaping goblet of white sangria…

Followed by a pour of the first white wine…

Which paired with the following bites:

This is truffle mushroom basmati rice with manchego cheese, beets and a perfectly poached egg.

These clams are gently broiled open and then dressed with cilantro, citrus zest and yuzu.

Next up was a pour of another white wine to go with this torched salmon and saffron nigiri and glazed Chilean sea bass (wrapped in crispy fried bread and topped with Serrano ham and asparagus).

After this, another glass of white (Gewürztraminer) came out with my favorite dish of the night (and a possible best of 2019 contender): portobello mushroom carpaccio. The Manchego cheese and crushed marcona almonds really made this pop, and the mushrooms are marinated in truffle oil.

There was a nice sangria-marinated cube of watermelon with mint served at this point, to get us ready for the next round.

After that, a red was poured…

To go along with these three meat courses:

Chicken: what a presentation. Broiled sweet mustard marinated thighs with tobiko, seaweed and champagne picked shallots. There were three kinds of sauces too.

Pork: braised marinated baby back rib.

Beef: prime rib eye katsu sando with Hokkaido milk bread and aioli, over shishito peppers.

After that, a palate cleansing cava came out, and then a glass of dessert white…

To go with this lemon tart and chocolate-stuffed churro.

What an amazing meal! There are so many more dishes I want to try on the menu. I’ll be back here again soon for sure, and I highly recommend you go as well. The price is low, the food is great, and there’s even live flamenco music.

NAI TAPAS BAR
85 Second Avenue
New York, NY 10003

Vintner Wine Market

My wife and I strolled by this cool spot on Sunday and popped in for a beer and a sandwich. Vintner Wine Market sports hundreds of cool and unique beer selections in their fridges, as well as wines (by the glass and bottle). But what really got my attention was the roast beef sandwich.

This baby comes with horseradish cheddar, mayo and red onion. Simple and delicious. And the baguette was nice and fresh.

Good sized sandwich. We will be back here for sure.

VINTNER WINE MARKET
677 9th Ave
New York, NY 10036

BallerBoil

This post will serve as a triple hit review of the Fresh Direct food delivery service, Tipsy’s boozy ice cream and Saveur Select wines.

My wife and some of our food friends were planning to do a Labor Day seafood boil on the rooftop of our building. It turns out, a few of the ladies managed to get the entire thing sponsored by the three companies above, provided that we post a few pics on Instagram.

Fresh Direct gave us a $500 credit to use towards their incredibly high quality seafood. We broke this out into two main items: a huge seafood boil, and a colossal chilled seafood tower.

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There was so much fucking food! Lobster, king crab legs, blue claw crabs, steamer clams, little neck clams, three varieties of oysters, jumbo shrimp, scallops, multi-colored potatoes, kielbasa and corn. My wife and I were always big fans of Fresh Direct but this seafood really hammers home the word FRESH in their name. The lobsters were delivered LIVE! And everything tasted incredible, which is obviously the most important factor.

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Saveur provided us with four bottles of crisp Gewürztraminer wine. This white German variety of wine was just the kind of refreshment we needed with this meal. We even poured some over fruit to make a white sangria.

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Tipsy hooked us up with six different pints of ice cream for dessert.

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The flavors were incredible: spiked hazelnut coffee, raspberry limoncello sorbet, cake batter vodka martini, dark chocolate whisky salted caramel, mango margarita sorbet and vanilla bean bourbon.

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We even scooped some into a few glasses of champagne for good measure. Why not?

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For more awesome pics, check THIS out.

Via Della Pace

UPDATE: This place is now CLOSED

Food promo titans Eaters Drinkers and The Creative Shake put together a great pizza tasting event at Via Della Pace Pizza, a cozy East Village joint that slings some really creative and unique pizza pies. I’m generally a traditionalist when it comes to pizza, but I was sold on these puppies.

Giovanni Bartocci and Marco Ventura co-own both Via Della Pace (another nearby restaurant) and Via Della Pace Pizza (this place).

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With the support of his family in Italy, Giovanni Nasti, the pizza chef at VDP Pizza, has employed creative ways to get color into the dough without using a single drop of food coloring. Essentially, he has invented colored pizza dough! As such, the thrust of this event was to showcase VDP Pizza’s multi-colored dough pies, of which we tried four (black, red, green and yellow).

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For black he uses squid ink. For red: beets and red wine. For green, it’s spinach. And for yellow, the key is saffron. Pretty smart, and completely natural.

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Each colored dough has it’s own set of toppings. As you can see in the pic above, the toppings and dough components compliment and highlight one another to make for great pops of flavor.

The yellow saffron dough is topped with pomegranate seeds, guacamole and asparagus. The cheese is mozzarella. Very pretty!

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The green spinach dough is topped with mozzarella, tomato sauce and basil. Super simple and traditional, but for the green dough. Absolutely wonderful.

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My two favorites (couldn’t choose a winner) were red and black. The red beets/wine pie is topped with gorgonzola, mozzarella, sausage, polenta and shaved black truffles. This baby was super earthy and savory. Definitely my kind of pie.

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The black squid ink pie is topped with red cabbage, smoked salmon, poppy seeds, sour cream, chives, mozzarella and tomato sauce. It may sound odd, but I assure you it works in every way. The day of the event was apparently both National Pizza Day AND National Bagel & Lox Day. As such, this was a perfect mash-up of epic Jewtalian proportions. I thoroughly enjoyed this, and I highly recommend that my readers give it a try. It’s so unique and tasty!

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The good people at VDP also put out some non-colored dough pies from their pizza menu. The first was the Vespasiano, which is topped with fior di latte, burrata, mixed vegetables and olives.

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The second was similar to their Augusto pie: prosciutto, olives, arugula, mozzarella and shaved parmigiano. Absolutely delicious. A perfect balance of savory-sweet and salty.

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This third one came out as I was about to leave for the night. It’s a shame, too, because it looks like my kind of pizza! Very traditional. Oh well. I guess that just means I will be back for more…

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For dessert, which came out a few minutes before that last pizza, we had these extremely addicting “Zoccolette alla Nutella Fritte.” These are nutella-filled zeppoli-like creations: fried pizza dough with hazelnut chocolate spread inside. Pop these babies with some ice cream or gelato and prepare to grow a few belt sizes.

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That about covers it. I categorize this as a type 1 pizza joint (they sell pies only – no individual slices), with a nice selection of food items aside from just the pizza. It’s a full restaurant.

VIA DELLA PACE
130 St. Marks Pl.
New York, NY 10009

Jack’s Sliders & Sushi

My wife scooped up a flash deal for this place that offered five courses with a bottle of wine.

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We got to sample a little bit of everything. I’ll hit you with a rundown of everything below:

The first thing I will say is that this place needs to do better with the pacing of the service. Everything pretty much came out all at once. The table was extremely cluttered as a result, and things inevitably spilled. I don’t mind too much, but maybe the kitchen needs to think about that when they receive orders.

We “started” with the spicy salmon salad to share. This was essentially a bed of lettuce topped with onions, diced salmon sashimi and spicy mayo. I thought it was delicious. Simple and tasty.

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The two sliders we tried were “Jack’s” and “The American.” “Jack’s” had bacon, onions and a spicy mayo, while “The American” was a simple lettuce, tomato, onion and cheese burger. The better of the two was Jack’s. It was nicely seasoned, had a good char, was cooked just right, and even had their dog logo pressed into the bun.

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We devoured these with an order of the old bay and herb french fries. These were excellent: golden crisp! Glad we ordered these above and beyond what the flash deal provided.

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Our next course was ramen. We tried the pork and beef bowls, skipping a sushi choice. The pork ramen was bland and lacked flavor – even the pork meat itself, which looked great, was just a little too boring. In hindsight, I wish we ditched the pork ramen and went with a sushi roll instead.

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The beef ramen had a good salt level, decent thin-sliced meat, and a thicker broth. That was the winner of the two, but I would say that if ramen is your game, then you should go to another place. This place is better for the burgers and sushi, and the ramen comes off more Chinese in flavor than Japanese.

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Our next item was braised short rib. The veggies here were useless. They tasted frozen or over-steamed or something. Not much flavor. But the beef itself was good. The meat was soft and tender, and the fat was all edible.

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Our wine was actually good. We went with the merlot instead of cabernet, chardonnay or pinot grigio. I thought it was going to be a headache-inducing acid reflux fest, but it was smooth and mild.

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For dessert, we tried two ice cream sandwiches. One was a sugar cookie with cookies and cream ice cream in between, and the other was red velvet cake with taro ice cream in the middle. Both were good, but we liked the sugar cookie better. The cookie held up better than the cake as “sandwich” material.

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Overall this was a decent meal. Skip the ramen, stick to the raw fish and burgers, and get the fries. That should keep you happy.

JACK’S SLIDERS & SUSHI
171 3rd Ave.
New York, NY 10003

Better Than Sex

Better Than Sex is a dessert-only restaurant in Key West that’s known for it’s over-the-top sexual references.

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That’s apparently supposed to be a black “member” entering a white booty. Classy!

Anyway I had a “peanut butter perversion,” which is a super soft peanut butter mousse cake with chocolate covered pretzel bark. REALLY good, but can get heavy despite the lightness of the mousse.

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My wife had this banana crepe cake, which was really good as well.

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We also shared this unique brie and chocolate grilled cheese. I liked this because it wasn’t as heavily sweet as the other items.

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This place does a lot of interesting drinks too, like “rimmed” glasses of wine or root beer floats with chocolate and caramel:

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The staff here is incredibly chipper. It is SO chipper that it will ruin your sex mood if that’s your goal for coming into this place. The server kept saying things like “super awesome,” and “girlfriend” (when talking with the ladies at the table).