Hello, hello! Hopefully you had a restful Thanksgiving — and if not, there’s always the hush of the new year waiting just around the corner. Here’s what we have for you today:
ALWAYS BE EATING The best things we ate (and loved) in NovemberI know: You just lived through the Super Bowl of eating. But in this line of work, every day is the Super Bowl of eating. And eat we did! As always, the Food team is here to share the best things we ate in November, in New York and Los Angeles — not counting Thanksgiving dinner. Curried Scotch egg at Lord’sLike City Councilman Chi Ossé, I’m no fan of a “surprise egg.” But if I know the egg is coming and the form it’s arriving in — as with the curried Scotch egg I recently enjoyed at Lord’s — I’m golden like its jammy yolk. The curry really takes the dish to new heights, which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows that the best restaurants in England are Indian. NIKITA RICHARDSON 506 LaGuardia Place (Bleecker Street), Greenwich Village Big eye tuna tarts at BondstI’m here to endorse a hot restaurant of yesteryear: Bondst’s still got it. The tuna tarts, on the menu since the restaurant opened in 1998, play to all of my baser instincts. A crispy layer of pressed gyoza wrappers form the “crust,” which is topped with ponzu mayonnaise, sheets of tuna as thin as Russ & Daughters lox and — take away my food-writing license for loving this — a drizzle of truffle oil. BECKY HUGHES Multiple locations, NoHo and Hudson Yards Sauerkraut fish soup at Nai BrotherThe best thing I ate in November is the best thing I eat almost every month: a bowl of Chinese sauerkraut fish soup from Nai Brother, a fast-growing local chain specializing in this trendy dish from Sichuan. I prefer the golden soup, which is like hot and sour soup with the umami dialed all the way up. It comes loaded with flaky fish fillets, tofu skin and tangy suan cai, or pickled greens. MAHIRA RIVERS Multiple locations, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and New Jersey The Rebound kathi roll at Karachi Kabab BoizAre you in need of a “breakup?” How about a “friend with benefits?” Karachi Kabab Boiz, a Pakistani food cart, has you covered. These are the names of their kathi rolls: mega-flaky hand-held wraps quickly assembled with onions, yogurt and smoky meats. I like all of the options, but there’s something about the “rebound”: stuffed to the brim with smoky beef Bihari. The taste of charcoal lingers in your throat like a shot of mezcal. LUKE FORTNEY Multiple locations, Greenwich Village and Jackson Heights Trout en escabeche at Casa LeoI’m still thinking about this dish. Served with the head on, the fish is mostly deboned but still whole, swimming in a wonderfully mellow and brothy sauce stained red with pimentón and inspired by an old presentation from the chef Martín Berasategui. TEJAL RAO 4500 Los Feliz Boulevard Suite C, Los Angeles Bomba rice at Eel BarI’m not usually susceptible to social media temptations, but a good friend ’grammed a picture of this dish at Eel Bar, and 24 hours later, I was sitting at a table in the Basque spot. The chef Aaron Crowder toasts the short grains in chicken fat before cooking them slowly in poultry stock until the rice is soft enough to spread across the plate like melted ice cream. The proverbial cherry on top? A pile of roasted chanterelles, all tender and earthy. RYAN SUTTON 252 Broome Street (Orchard Street), Lower East Side
THE BRIEF REVIEW Bartolo★ (Good) | Critic’s Pick If the chef Ryan Bartlow’s first restaurant, Ernesto’s, channeled the Basque region of Spain with a taberna-inspired menu, his follow-up, Bartolo in the West Village, invokes the Old World through its bar and connected dining rooms. Each space is a cinematically stylish moment, blending rustic low wood beam ceilings with gleaming dark marble and formally dressed tables intimately arranged. Bartlow’s kitchen excels at easing you into a meal, starting with nibbles called pintxos that ply your palate with salt, acid and fat. Torreznos, cubes of olive oil-fried pork belly, are impressively crisp. Croquetas de jamón ooze with lush béchamel. A Cantabrian anchovy draped over French butter on crisp pan de cristal imported from Spain is a heady one-two bite. Service is affable and informed, with contagious enthusiasm for hand-carved jamón Ibérico and glasses of syrupy Pedro Ximénez. Where another chef might temper Spanish tavern cooking for American diners, Bartlow opts for fidelity: The callos a la Madrileña is unbending in its dedication to the texture of tripe, braised until fully gelatinous and brimming with earthy pimentón. But it’s the simpler Spanish staples that make a great meal here. Garlic permeates plump shrimp, crisp potato batons and fried eggs with lacy edges. Amid ostentatious presentations of off-menu Highland Hollow strip steak or pre-reserved quarters of roast suckling pig, the baby lamb chops, buttery soft and delicately smoky, deliver an exacting taste of Spanish wine country cooking. For dessert, the cheesecake for two made with Bayley Hazen blue cheese tempers pungency with sweetness, but the tocino de cielo, a thick egg yolk custard with crumbles of velvety turrón de Jijona nougat, is effortlessly delicious. Its name, after all, means heavenly bacon. Address: 301 West Fourth Street (West 12th Street), West Village; 646-494-4970; bartolonyc.com Recommended Dishes: Croquetas de jamón; torreznos con almendras; huevos fritos con patatas y gambas; callos a la Madrileña; chuletillas de cordero; torta de queso, tocino de cielo. Price: $$$ Wheelchair Access: The restaurant is below street level and not accessible by wheelchair.
FROM OUR CHIEF CRITICS The Times’s first four-star review in over two yearsYes, kaiseki is the new omakase. And the proof is at Yamada in Chinatown, the city’s finest kaiseki restaurant — Ligaya Mishan should know, she checked them all out just to be sure. The restaurant’s chef Isao Yamada shows a “daily commitment to the smallest details, to precision and the tedium exacted in achieving it, until refinement becomes a kind of reverence.” And that’s how you earn four stars. Read the review → Also! If you’d like to know what makes a restaurant worthy of four stars, check out this interview with Ligaya and her co-chief critic, Tejal Rao. OPENING OF THE WEEK KimmiWhether you’re gluten-free by choice or by design, you can add Kimmi to your dining list. Tomorrow, the team behind TLK and Tiger Lily Kitchen will open this Asian-influenced gluten-free spot on Canal Street near Chrystie Street. And on the other end of the open spectrum, Llama Inn in Williamsburg is closing on Dec. 20 after 10 years in business, so get your lomo saltado in while you still can. More restaurant openings → A LITTLE QUIZ Four star editionWhich of these restaurants has been reviewed by four different Times critics over its lifetime? Have New York City restaurant questions? Send us a note here. Follow NYT Food on TikTok and NYT Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest.
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