A Tiger In The Kitchen

The Loading Dock: "Worthy" Fish Tacos

This might be what they call a classic New York food fairytale.

Boy moves to New York. Boy starts selling fish tacos at out of a little stand at the Brooklyn Flea in Dumbo. Boy's tacos develop a hungry following. Boy opens restaurant.

And to add to the cool factor, he opens it in the loading dock of a former garment factory in downtown Brooklyn -- talk about economical use of space in this land-starved city.

The Boy in this case would be Forrest Cole, who explains on his Web site that he first started selling fish tacos at the flea after fruitlessly trying to find a "worthy example" of a Baja-style fish taco in the city.

Now, that's talking quite a bit of smack about New York's many pre-existing taco joints.

We had to see just how "worthy" these fish tacos were ...

Colicchio & Sons: Super-Rich Locavore

Unless you've been in deep hibernation, if you live in New York and have been known to consume food, you've probably noticed that Tom Colicchio opened a new restaurant in Manhattan last week.

The breathless chatter over Colicchio & Sons in the Meatpacking District has been inescapable since the "Top Chef" judge announced that he was turning his ailing Craftsteak space into a locavore joint with a comfort food bent. (The restaurant is an offshoot of Colicchio's popular Tom: Tuesday Dinner, a weekly 32-seat event in which Tom himself put together a $150 to $200 meal made with of-the-season ingredients.)

Now, being a big lover of red meat -- even if I wasn't exactly a fan of the concept of Craftsteak's $100 steaks -- I'm always a little morose whenever a steakhouse shutters.

If its replacement is a worthy one, however, that's another matter.

We decided to investigate ...

Gayatri Restaurant: One For The Road

Your last meal in any city is no small matter, I've always believed.

It's the meal you might still be able to taste as you look out at the diminishing skyline from the plane; the one that you'll be thinking of to tide you over until you return again.

During my most recent trip to Singapore for book research, where to have my last supper was a particularly hard decision.

I'd eaten well. In just a few weeks, I'd clocked not one but two visits to Hock Lam for the umami bomb that is its gooey beef ball noodles. I'd trekked to the seafront Changi Village to sample the nasi lemak, a Malay dish of coconut rice with a fried chicken wing, sambal chili, fried egg and crunchy anchovies, from a hawker stall I loved but hadn't visited in over 10 years. And I'd had a lovely lunch at Iggy's, a high-end restaurant that served up a custard-like French toast dessert topped with thick flecks of truffles that was truly unforgettable.

When plotting the appropriate finale, one thing instantly came to mind.

My friend Basil had told me a few weeks back about taking some people to his favorite restaurant in Little India to eat spicy mutton, drink beer and watch the world go by. 

The choice was obvious.

Come, I said, let's go.

Top 10: The Memorable Eats Of 2009

 

You know it's been a good year when you are able to say this: 2009 was when I began to eat for a living.

I'd always been a devotee of affairs of the stomach. I may have written about fashion and other lifestyle areas for a living but baking, braising, trying new recipes, eating out -- those were what consumed me when weekends rolled around. 

Luck has its ways of finding you, however. Now, on the precipice of 2010, I'm beginning to close out a lunar calendar year of cooking and eating with my family in Singapore as research for my book, "A Tiger In The Kitchen." 

My journey so far has taken me many places -- France, where I had the loveliest gingery champagne cocktail with friends old and dear; China, where my father and I went in search of my great-grandfather's footprints in the village of his birth. And, of course, Singapore, where my aunties and maternal grandmother have been plying me with meals, recipes and much, much love along the way.

With all that I've packed into 2009, it's hard to decide what the highlights have been. But, inspired by some stellar Top 10 gastronomic lists out there (definitely check out Sam Sifton's list of Top 11 dishes in New York in the New York Times), I decided to give it a go.

Here, in no particular order, are my 10 memorable eats of 2009. 

Enjoy, buon appetito and listen, let's do this again in 2010 ...

Debal: A Devil of a Curry

If you're still staring at a fridge full of Christmas ham, roast beef or turkey, here's something you can do with all those leftovers -- make debal.

The dish, a traditional spicy stew that Eurasians in Singapore make on Boxing Day, is a kitchen-sink concoction made with the myriad leftover meats of Christmas feasts. It's a classic dish in Eurasian cuisine, which developed in the 19th Century when European traders began migrating to Singapore and marrying into local families. Debal combines cooked hams and roast beef with spicy Southeast Asian chilis and ginger.

I spent a few hours last week learning how to make debal (pronounced "dee-bahl" and also known as curry devil or devil's curry) from chef Damian D'Silva of Big D's Grill for a piece for The Atlantic.

The process is fairly laborious -- you'll need to be stirring constantly for at least two hours. But the end result is out of this world.

Here's how to do it ...

Shantou: Going Home

Some girls are Daddy's little princesses -- as for me, I was more like Daddy's little eating partner.

My dad and I, our obsessions are numerous. But the one dish that we find ourselves constantly craving is ta meepok (also known as meepok ta), a tagliatelle-like Chinese noodle that's tossed with bits of crunchy, fried pork lard in a chili-soy-black vinegar sauce and topped with fish balls, fish cakes and bits of minced or sliced pork.

It's a simple dish by the Teochews, an ethnic Chinese group, that we'd eat for breakfast in Singapore every day if we could. (More important, if our bodies could handle it.)

So the moment I landed in the Teochew city of Shantou, China, for our trip back to the village where my great-grandfather was born, I knew what we had to eat right away.

The Breslin: Gastropub, Grown Up

This is the sort of restaurant that The Breslin is: You will arrive on a Monday night to find the restaurant full and the bar jammed with the studiedly -- and also studly -- casual set. The wait, they will say, is 45 minutes to an hour.

You have a drink, some snacks and 45 minutes go by. An hour passes. There is still no word -- even though a stroll through the dining room shows that there are not one, not two, but a few tables that have been sitting empty for a bit.

At almost 90 minutes, it's getting a little tiresome. Nearby Koreatown is starting to look like a surer bet for dinner -- but just as you start to gesture toward your bar waitress for the check, you spy her spotting you and then sprinting over to the hostess for a quick discussion. Faster than you can say "Check, please," the hostess is by your side, telling you that now, there is a table open.

You consider leaving because, well, this is all a little bizarre. But you decide to stay -- and it's a good thing you do because what's on the dinner menu, it turns out, is worth waiting for.

But you really wouldn't expect anything less or different from owners of the Spotted Pig, the small West Village gastropub that quickly became the place for Leonardo DiCaprio spottings when it first opened in 2004. 

East Side Social Club: Not Quite Monkey Bar Lite

"Let's meet here," I had said, noting an Eater.com post that called the new East Side Social Club "a sleek sexy spot for the Monkey Bar rejects."

My "been everywhere" friend Bob's immediate response? "I never get rejected at the Monkey Bar."

Good point.

Even so, East Side Social Club held some intrigue. Opened by Billy Gilroy (owner of Macao and Employees Only), with celebrity photographer Patrick McMullen as an investor and Devon Gilroy, who's clocked time at Chanterelle and A Voce, helming the kitchen, the restaurant had generated plenty of buzz well before its doors officially opened last week.

The menu was designed to be Italian, with some modern American dishes with a locavore bent tossed in. And the cocktails, given Papa Gilroy's other establishments, promised to be interesting.

We had no big complaints about either, really -- the price and the ambience, however, were another matter altogether.

If you're expecting anything like the fashionable, genteel comfort of modern supper clubs like Graydon Carter's Monkey Bar, you're going to be a little disappointed.

Obao: Panned Asian

New York is filled with so many "pan-Asian" restaurants that it can be difficult to get excited about yet another one setting up shop.

Vietnamese pork chops? Been there. Summer rolls? So, so done that.

And Obao, Michael Huynh's newest addition to his rapidly expanding string of Manhattan restaurants, hits these and all the other usual notes that you'll find at many other similarly billed places in the city.

What's different? Not much, compared with your run-of-the-mill multi-ethnic Asian restaurant.

There are some hits -- anything meaty and/or grilled. And, of course, some misses, namely a "spicy" Singapore laksa (pictured above) that's so watered down that its broth tastes like hot water with some curry powder tossed in toward the end.

But here's the thing: Even at Obao's recession-friendly prices (which put entrees between $9 and $18), for those who enjoy a hearty bowl of noodle soup or a crisp papaya salad now and then, there are just so many other places in the city to go for better versions.

So, why eat here?

Purple Yam: Filipino, Just Like Mom's

It's hard not to be leery of restaurants that try to please too many palates.

When dishes as disparate as bibimbap, goat curry and wild boar pizza pop up on a menu that's supposed to have a distinct Filipino bent, you get the distinct feeling that something's got to give. Korean and Filipino dishes, after all, can be complex undertakings.

At Purple Yam, the new Filipino/pan-Asian restaurant in Ditmas Park by Chef Romy Dorotan (who shuttered his well-regarded Cendrillon in Manhattan earlier this year), the menu is that varied. But there's a lot to like about Dorotan's food so far.

Well, as long as you stick to the Filipino dishes.