Skeen's 5 & Diamond

Admittedly, I haven't done nearly as much legwork on the NYC dining scene as I did when I was in LA. Somehow not having any income puts a damper on dining experiences. Go figure. Additionally, I live so far uptown that whenever I tell people I'm in Morningside Heights, they stare at me blankly and reply, "You mean Harlem." Well sure enough, when I found out there was an upscale restaurant within walking distance, I made sure to give it a try.

More...

As I mentioned, having done hardly any research into 5 & Diamond, I had only vaguely heard that some famous chef was at the helm. I noticed the young, bearded man walking to and fro carrying ingredients, but didn't make the connection until I got home. Of course I also didn't realize all the drama that has attended Chef Ryan Skeen. Regardless of the chef's personality, if he can cook, I'm coming back.


Starting with the seared scallops with morel puree, fava beans, pea shoots and sherry vinaigrette, Chef Skeen was already on my good side--beautifully seared scallops at perfect doneness balanced with a hearty, earthy morel sauce and piquant vinaigrette.


The burrata and panzanella with tomato, arugula, melted eggplant, and nicoise olive was huge for a small plate. Unfortunately, such a large dish lacked substance. With something like this, each ingredient has to be able to carry a flavor load on its own and I wasn't getting enough from each disparate piece. In short, no unity of taste.


Iowa Farms Pork Loin with white asparagus, ramps, pickled blueberries. Does food automatically taste better if you reveal the origin of the ingredients? At first, I didn't think that Iowa Farms would be worth mentioning, but apparently it is. It's good to see independent farms. Doesn't everyone hate industrial agribusinesses? The loin was indeed tender and the accouterments were clutch. Pickled blueberries were a clever way to bring in the sweet along with the tart. This dish would have been been improved by some browning however. A few grill marks would've done wonders.


The Burger. That's all it's listed as on the menu. I may not have done much research, but I at least knew this was the burger that Chef Skeen had perfected at Irving Mill. A house-ground combination of beef cheek, flap steak, and pork fatback, the flavor was much more porky than beefy. It made for a juicy burger that certainly stayed on my lips for quite awhile, but lacked the deep beef flavor of Minetta Tavern's Black Label Burger. The waiter mentioned that the chef was experimenting with chips instead of the usual fries. The chips came with a barbecue seasoning fairly typical for barbecue chips. They will leave me forever wondering whether Skeen does his fries thick or thin.


Would this be considered deconstructed cheesecake with grapefruit, meringue and tarragon? Is it deconstructed because it is a cake in a bowl with no real crust? I'm never quite sure what the term "deconstructed" means, but since so many people use it, I'm going to go out on a limb and apply it to my dessert. Having no crust, the cheesecake would've lacked that signature grittiness that all cheesecakes have as the crust gets macerated along with the cheese filling.

Having heard all the news about Skeen's issues with the front of house staff, I would note that the service tonight was clumsy and sophomoric. The waiter didn't know the food well enough; he couldn't tell me what kind of cheese came on the burger. Another table asked him what "ramps" were and he was at a loss. Normally that is not such a huge problem, especially if he just admits he doesn't know and comes back later with the answer, but two in a row reflects badly on the restaurant. I was also the only table at the restaurant for about 45 minutes and still had to wait quite awhile for my food and drink service. This little service issues can certainly be ironed out and weren't bad enough to detract too strongly from the food, but I would be hesitant to come on a busy night when the waiters have even more of a challenge to juggle.

I'll come back for the food. But I'll come back just to support these kind of restaurants. There aren't enough upscale dining options in Harlem, and since downtowners lumps me in with the neighborhood, I should do my best to support it.

5 & Diamond
2072 Frederick Douglass Blvd.
Harlem, NY 10026
(646) 684-4662
$16 Burrata
$13 Scallops
$26 Pork loin
$13 Burger
$8 Cheesecake

^

Read More

Canelé in Atwater Village: It's Pronounced Can-a-lay

As the title might suggest, I was a little slow picking up the correct pronunciation of Canelé. I'm never very good with French or Italian. So after being corrected by Christine I'm writing it here prominently so I can remember. Given that I was working in Pasadena the last week, I decided to send out an invite for a casual dinner at the restaurant I had been meaning to try for months. Of course, I realized that night that bloggers don't really have "casual dinners" and meals inevitably (d)evolve into marathons, to be chronicled in an upcoming post.

More...

My first encounter with Canelé was the LA Magazine Top 75 Restaurants list last year. When I first read it, I had only gone to four of those places. Now I've gone to sixteen. Still not quite as many as I had hoped, but along the way I found enough other places to keep me quite satisfied. But knowing that this was one of Mattatouille's favorite restaurants, I called him up along with Christine, Danny, Fiona, Josh, and Kevin for dinner. I guess it's safe to say since today was my last day of work, but I'm moving to New York. This was one of the last get-togethers I'd have with my foodie friends and certainly didn't disappoint.

I entered the quaint restaurant about ten to six on a Thursday night. Greeting me was Jane Choi, the manager, and Corina Weibel, the chef. Together, this dynamic duo runs the front and back-end operations of Canelé. Of course "back-end" is somewhat of a misnomer because of the open air kitchen in plain sight of the dining patrons. I could see myself coming by for a bite after work, maybe sitting along the bar, watching the cooks churn out Mediterranean comfort food. I swore I saw Andre Royo at the bar too, but none of my companions watched The Wire and couldn't identify him as that lovable drug addict Bubbles.

No reservations are accepted since the place is so small, but since I was the first person in the restaurant, I had no trouble securing the large communal table, which seats about 8-12. Eschewing the $22 prix-fixe menu Tuesday through Thursday, our group of seven picked out five appetizers, seven entrees and four desserts.


Cod Brandade
According to Matt, this is a common bistro fare. I could easily imagine it being a simple snack served on a Parisian patio. As with most French food, the dish was rich and soul-warming. A cod, olive oil, and milk puree, it had plenty of cod flavor but without unbearable fishiness. Eaten with a few slices of baguette, this could easily make a heavy first course or a midday snack. I wonder if any wine could stand up to this dish. Our syrah and chardonnay certainly couldn't keep up.


Clams and Mussels
As one of the specials of the day, the clams and mussels dish was not a typical menu item. For seafood like clams and mussels, I always like to hear that they're offered as a special. I like to think that the chef picked those out because they looked good for that night, rather than keeping them on the menu and settling for substandard seafood. What I liked about this plate of mollusks was that the shellfish had an opportunity to express its own flavor rather than simply being swallowed up in garlic butter. Definitely, the butter helped to heighten the flavor, but it wasn't dominating.


Lamb liver terrine
This was my first encounter with lamb liver terrine. Considering my deep love of anything lamb, I would've sought this out earlier had I known it existed. However, my fear with liver dishes is always that the iron taste of liver would overwhelm whatever else was present in the dish. Perhaps it was just bad liver prepared in my childhood that turned me off to that organ in particular. But this lamb terrine had a curious consistency, almost like tuna salad, and an intensity of lamb taste. Paired with the caraway-beer sauce, I could eat a tub of it.


Asparagus and egg on toast
Maybe there's a fancier name for this dish, but it is best described by its component parts. Typically, I am not a fan of asparagus, but the combination of asparagus and egg actually makes me want to buy a few stalks of the hardy green for my next omelet. I always like loose yolk preparations of egg. Good bread dipped in a runny yolk makes an excellent breakfast.


Duck liver pate
My favorite appetizer of the night, the duck pate was creamy enough to melt delicately in my mouth, but solid enough to hold up the cherry compote. This was presented to us as duck liver, but I'm curious if there is a duck liver that's not foie gras. Does the liver need to be fattened to be considered foie gras? As far as I can tell, terrine refer to the cookware, whereas pate just refers to a spreadable minced meat and fat.


Salt roasted brazino
I believe the salt roasted title indicated that the fish was covered in a salt dome to moderate temperature and properly season the fish. The resultant dish had a pleasant flavor with the perfect amount of seasoning. This was my first exposure to caperberries, which are like giant capers. From what I deduced, capers are pickled buds of a Mediterranean bush, whereas caperberries are when the buds are allowed to flower and produce the caperberry fruit. In my opinion, caperberries are much more delightful.


Duck confit
When I first heard about confits, meats slowly simmered in its own rendered fat, I thought this would surely be my favorite preparation of duck. However, in practice, most of the confits I find are too dry. Without enough moisture, the flavor is defeated and the texture flakes. This wasn't the case with the confit at Canelé. Each piece maintain its juiciness and fat.


Pork shortribs
Christine may peg me as a complainer, but I was clearly complimenting the short ribs for glistening in all that holy fat. I wouldn't blame anyone for mistakenly calling this lump of hog meat pork belly. Given its shiny, layered appearance, I was shocked that this didn't come from the underside of a pig. Do I really need to describe its flavor? Look at it. How else could it taste?


Leg of lamb
For my personal dish, I chose the leg of lamb. I'm a sucker for lamb, I just can't resist. Sadly, for all the complexity of flavor, much of it was lost by being overcooked. The meat was probably closer to a medium-well than a dull red medium-rare.

We also had a few desserts, but by then the sun had set and my poor camera couldn't capture anything that wasn't grainy and bathed in the orange glow of incandescent light. Their homemade cheesecake was my preferred meal-ender. Instead of a slice, each cake is made separately. It looked more like a wheel of chevre than a cake. The flourless chocolate cake was also one of the fluffiest flourless cakes I've had. It bypasses the problem of dense chocolate black holes of indulgence. And in case you're wondering, Jane served us Canelés on the way out. Maybe I got a bad one, but mine tasted slightly burnt and it lacked any kind of soft center.


Ah, so that's the namesake pastry

See some actual food worthy pictures and encyclopedic insight on Kevin's post.

For the brunch review and a Christine photospread, see Matt's entry.

Canelé
3219 Glendale Blvd
Glendale, 90039
(323)666-7133
canele-la.com
$6-11 appetizers, $18-22 entrees, $7 desserts

^

Read More

I Heard Lucques is the Best Restaurant in LA...

Lucques
8474 Melrose Ave
West Los Angeles, 90064
$124 for two entrees, two appetizers, wine, cocktail and tea

Taking a break from my Peruventures, I thought I would share my thoughts on my dinner at Lucques. Alas, I could not make the famous Sunday Supper reservations, but I was able to grab an 8:15 on Monday night. It seems every major publication in the area gave glowing reviews for Lucques including S. Irene Virbilla of the LA Times and Jonathan Gold of LA Weekly, not to mention being ranked as the best restaurant in LA by LA Magazine. That said, I'd have to add my own blog to that list of Lucques reviewers.


Bread offering with almonds and olives

The atmosphere was quaint, as you'd expect from a restaurant set in the converted cottage of silent movie star Harold Lloyd. Wooden rafters give way to brick siding and open out to a small patio. In LA, there's hardly ever a restaurant that doesn't take full advantage of the beautiful evening weather with outdoor seating. The space wasn't large, but it conveyed elegance in intimacy. A group of slightly inebriated women chatted in a corner with a tall bottle of red wine, a clumsy suitor chatted nervously with his date nearby and what looked like a sugar daddy was showering his little ward with gifts of wines and desserts. Whatever the social circumstances, Lucques seemed to provide an appropriate backdrop.


Market lettuces with green goddess dressing, ruby grapefruit, avocado

The restaurant features one of those constantly updating menus depending on the seasons and availability of ingredients. It's also one of those menus which I could blindly point at and still be completely satisfied. Supposedly, the cuisine is Mediterranean-inspired but channeled through a Californian focus. Elements of Greek, Spanish and Italian dotted the menu, but the most prominent feature was the variety of ingredients. Indeed, with the dishes I tasted, I could sense the deep appreciation that Chef Goin has for the foods she works with. She allows each flavor to trumpet its own horn, whether the sweetness of the grapefruit or the tartness of the citrus dressing of the salad. Her expertise is not only limited to produce, but the delightful lamb carpaccio also showed a great respect for meat. The crispy fried fingerling potatoes and the creamy scallion aioli paired so nicely with the tender lamb that each forkful blended with complexity. The flavors are good enough separately, but combined they were heavenly. It reminded me of the scene from Ratatoutille where Remy describes to his brother how combining notes can create whole new chords of aroma and flavor.

And that was just the appetizers.


Slow-roasted Veal

The two entrees I tried, the slow-roasted veal with potato gratin and the crispy pork belly with peaches were hearty. So hearty in fact, the food doesn't look that exquisite. There wasn't the excessively large plate with a dainty morsel in the center with a single chive resting on its side. No, this was the food you wanted to see when you're hungry. Unfortunately, I had filled up quite a bit on the bread and appetizers already and seeing my pork belly made me somewhat anxious. While I would gladly order pork belly again as an appetizer, having a full serving as an entree is just too much. The pork had contrasting textures of the crisp skin and the tender fat that made eating it so interesting. But it was that fat, combined with a sauce heavy on the butter, that was simply too much for me. It was actually one of those moments where I could feel my life shortening. But who wants to live a life without food like this?

That night I knew precisely why Lucques received all those accolades. It reached out to an LA that was hungry. Hungry not for large portions, but food you eat when you really want to enjoy your food. Sometimes we get so caught up in experimental cuisine, where it's often more of a test for your brain than your stomach, that it's easy to miss the food that just makes us say, "Yum!"

Read More

Gaby's Mediterranean

10445 Venice Blvd
Culver City, CA 90034

Adequately Fed: $15

Ordered:
Leban* (yogurt drink, not sweet at all if that's what you expected like me)
Jillab****(raspberry date drink, tastes like you're drinking a Bath & Body Works)
Baba ghanoush** (resembles eggplant hummus, too intense without sufficient pita bread)
Lamb Kabob****
Chicken Shawarma****
(Out of Five Stars)

First impression: "where the hell's the restaurant? Oh, it's this tent looking thing in the parking lot." Gaby's Mediterranean does indeed consist entirely of outdoor patio seating. On the particular night we went, it was a little cold for outdoor seating, but the tent was well heated with multiple heat lamps placed throughout the complex. The outdoor atmosphere was conducive to the hookah that the table next to us was using however.

We were served a basket of pita bread with a side of something resembling bruschetta. They refill the basket, so make sure you don't fill up completely on that. I ordered the baba ghanoush because I always wondered what it was. It complimented the pita quite nicely, but it gradually became overwhelming.

The portions of their entrees were generously large. This is when you should have heeded my warning before and avoided eating too much of the bread. Both the chicken and lamb came with salad and rice. The chicken dish had a dallop of what I conjectured to be garlic paste and sour cream, but it went excellently with the chicken. The lamb was well-marinated and grilled to perfection.

For a little Mediterranean tastes away from the overpopulated Italian peninsula, consider what Gaby's can offer you in Lebanese food. From what I understand, Gaby's is also opened late. It would make an excellent place to get good food after normal dinner hours.

Recommended: Good place to hang out with a group of friends. Go on a warm night however.

Read More