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Top 10 New Foods We Ate in 2010

With another year gone it’s time to look back and reflect on all the deliciousness that was. Here are the top ten new dishes the Endless Simmer team was lucky enough to stuff in our mouths over the past 12 months.

10. Fried Peanut Butter, Banana and Bourbon Sandwich

breslin peanut butter and banana

Breakfast at The Breslin in New York is about as ridiculously delectable as it gets. In their modern update on The Elvis sandwich, peanut butter, banana, bourbon and vanilla are all goo-ily encased in a fried-til-crispy puffed skin. (Photo: gsz)

9. Sustainable Sushi

sustainable sushi

Sushi is the modern foodie’s last major guilt trip — a dish that just can’t be done locally, sustainably, or ethically. Or is it? At Miya’s Sushi in New Haven, Connecticut chef Bun Lai is turning the sushi CW on its head, proving it can be just as tasty and exciting when overfished species like unagi and bluefin are replaced with sustainable, North American fish. If there’s one new food idea that turns into a 2011 trend, we hope it’s this.

8. Burrata Everywhere

burrata

This revelatory cheese wasn’t invented in 2010 (try 1920) but this was the year we saw the Italian delicacy pop up on menus all across America. Fresh curds of buffalo milk mozzarella are stirred into salted cream and kneaded and pulled until they take on a gloriously goopy texture that makes all other mozz look like lifeless balls of nothing. Burrata is such a perfect cheese that only a sliver of bread and a touch of olive oil are needed to make it a meal. The quality varies place to place, but we sampled particularly tasty versions at Roman’s in Brooklyn and The Lake Chalet in Oakland. You? (Photo: Chiara Lorè)

7. The Mighty Cone

the mighty cone

The Austin, Texas food truck scene is one of the most heralded in the nation, and this local ready-to-eat-on-the-street treat is the one we’re most hoping to see go national. At this year-old trailer, a tortilla cone is filled with cornflake-almond-chili-crusted chicken tenders, fried avocado, mango-jalapeno slaw and ancho sauce. The ice cream cone is dead. Long live the chicken cone.
(Photo: The Mighty Cone)

6. Malaysian BBQ

fatty cue

Usually by the time a budding chef-lebrity opens their third restaurant, they’re churning out a watered down, assembly line version of what made them famous. Not so for Zak Pelaccio, who branched out this year with Fatty Cue, a Brooklyn restaurant that ingeniously fuses traditional southeast Asian flavors into classic BBQ dishes. The never gimmicky menu ranges from heritage pork ribs in smoked fish-palm syrup and Indonesian long pepper to Manila claims swimming in bone broth with barbecued bacon and chili. (Photo: Fatty Cue)

Next: Top 5 New Foods We Ate in 2010

in Bacon / Cheese / Fowl / Lists / Sandwich 2 comments

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ES Chats with the Michelin Man

michelinjean-luc_naret

Wednesday morning was the equivalent of Oscar nominations day for New York City chefs of a certain caliber, who woke up and found out whether they had won or lost a star from the esteemed French food critics at Michelin. (Yes, the same people who replace your tires are also the world’s most feared and respected food critics — go figure.) But it was also an interesting day for Jean-Luc Naret, Michelin’s directeur general, whose job is to personally call each chef and break the good (or bad) news. We caught up with the foodie world’s Santa Claus/Grinch to see how his big day went.

ES: So you actually call each of these chefs yourself? Are they expecting your call?
Jean-Luc Naret: Yes, I call each newly starred chef every year. You never know if they are expecting you. It’s sometimes really beautiful, such as with a chef like Cesar Ramirez at Brooklyn Fare [the first Brooklyn chef to ever receive two stars] who I called this morning and told him that he has two stars. That was a great call because he knows what it means. And it’s not two stars in Brooklyn — of course it is in Brooklyn, but it is two stars period. It means that his kitchen is becoming one of the best kitchens in the world. So he’s going to have a lot of focus on him now and hopefully he can keep it the same way.

But you also do the other call — when someone loses a star. Sounds awkward. How does that go?

Read More›
in Restaurants 5 comments
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Bacon Goes Big

bacon

You know how all you across-the-pond folks always brag about how thick and delicious British bacon is and love to deride our streaky American bacon as weak, flimsy, and not worth it? Well, I’m putting you all on notice.

I recently sat down at the bar at The General Greene, one of the many farm-to-table, haute barnyard chic restaurants that has opened in Brooklyn over the last few years. I wanted a little snack to go with my $9 handcrafted cocktail, so we ordered a side of candied bacon. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much—maybe a bowl of crumbled, caramelized bits that would be gone in 60 seconds.

Um, no. Candied bacon here is basically an entire meal. It’s your standard smoky, salty, American-style bacon (with an added sweet touch), but instead of slicing it into thin, fryable strips, they just serve you the whole damn belly, and you eat it with a knife and fork. Seeing a big, streaky hunk of pig belly served like that is cool because it kinda shows you how they get those tiny slices of bacon out of a big slab of pork. I think I even said out loud “oh, so that’s where bacon comes from.”

OK, so it’s basically like eating five slices of bacon in one bite. So maybe don’t order the whole thing for yourself, or more than once a year. But I gotta give credit to anyone who can still surprise me with bacon.

More: The Best of New Brooklyn Cuisine

More Bacon: Recipes, raves and other bacon bits in Endless Bacon.

(Photo: The General Greene)

in Bacon / Endless Bacon / Pig / Restaurants / Trends 0 comments
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NYC Tour De Poutine

poutine

It was during a visit to Montreal some eight years ago that I first discovered the glory that is poutine. This French Canadian specialty is a heart-stopping, gut-busting treat that somehow manages to out-America American food, topping crispy French fries with mounds of fresh cheese curds and thick brown gravy. Delicious. Frightening. Genius.

The dish is so popular Up North that it’s even served at McDonald’s in Montreal. Now it’s quickly proliferating New York restaurant menus and appears set to become the next Bahn Mi/Fried Chicken/obsessive over-the-top comfort food trend. So I set out to explore every New York restaurant currently serving poutine. With a little (OK, a lot) of help from some friends, I’m delighted to share this exhaustive report, along with the news that my internal organs appear to still be intact…for now.

Drunken Poutine: T Poutine

t poutine 1

The first NYC shop to make poutine the focus of their menu, this Lower East Side newcomer sees Canada’s challenge and raises it, offering artery-clogging options like the steakhouse poutine (topped with caramelized onions, blue cheese and thinly sliced steak) and the morning glory poutine (applewood smoked bacon and sunnyside up egg). The gravy (which also comes in a veggie version) is nothing to write home about, but this party-area spot, which is BYOB and open til 5am on weekends, is more about the alcohol-soaking extras. You can ramp your poutines up even further with add-ons like Essex pickles and panko fried cheese curds. 168 Ludlow Street, $7.25 – $9.50

Update: T Poutine has sadly closed

Everything Poutine: Corner Burger

corner burger

After returning from an eye-opening holiday trip to Montreal, the owners of this Park Slope burger and sandwich shop have updated their menu with an astounding 13 varieties of poutine. The Americanized takes—pepperoni, mozzarella and marinara make up the “pizza poutine”—are in our opinion unnecessary, but Corner Burger hits a home run with the hearty classic versions, such as “poutine galvaude,” a popular Quebecois take that adds shredded chicken and peas to the standard dish, which features a delicious housemade chicken gravy. 381 5th Avenue, Brooklyn. $6 – $7.50

Extra Cheese Poutine: Dive Bar

dive bar

This long-standing Upper West Side establishment has been serving poutine for years, and there’s nothing fancy or inventive about their take. (The bartender found it hilarious/adorable that I wanted to take a photo.) The possibly canned gravy is mediocre, but as you can see that’s not really the emphasis here. Dive Bar wins the most-cheese-curds-for-your-dollar award by a long shot, and gets extra props for the fact that the extra-crispy fries hold up well under all that weight. 732 Amsterdam Avenue, $8.

Next: The poutine only gets crazier…

in Bacon / Cheese / Eggs / Endless Bacon / Featured / Fowl / Red Meat / Restaurants 20 comments
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Top 10 New Things to Put in Your Drink

We’ve certainly never been against drinking here at ES — it just traditionally takes a back seat to eating. However, in the last year we’ve found ourselves getting more and more excited about cocktails — because every time we go out we discover our favorite ingredients have migrated from the plate to the glass. From fruits and vegetables to spices and more, here are our top 10 favorite new things to mix in our drinks.

10. Saffron

A saffron ice cube anchors the Venetian, one of several new food-inspired cocktails at Tulio in Seattle.

Not just for paella anymore, the Spanish spice has started showing up in cocktail glasses, too. Saffron Restaurant and Lounge in Minneapolis has mixed the pricier-than-gold flakes into saffron-mango mojitos, saffron-blood orange martinis, and their current offering, the gin-based Saffron Rose. Tulio, an Italian restaurant in Seattle, recently introduced The Venetian — a vodka cocktail poured over an orange-y saffron ice cube. For those experimenting at home, the folks over at Video Jug have a video on how to mix a saffron vodka martini. (Tulio photo: Evan Johnson)

 

9. Beets

Fresh beet juice, ginger and vodka make up the Beetnik at Colorado's Dogwood Cocktail Cabin.

It’s hard to make a drink look more dramatic than when filled up with bright red beet juice, as in the beet sangria at New York’s Tailor or the Beetnik, a vodka-ginger-beet concoction served at Crested Butte, Colorado’s Dogwood Cocktail Cabin. Meanwhile, the gals at The Humble Kitchen have a recipe for their own tequila-based Beetnik. (Dogwood photo: eenwall)

8. Mole

Mole bitters liven up the Palermo Gentleman at Death + Co. in New York.

Mexico’s spicy-sweet chocolate treat is making the surprising transition from tamales to cocktails via Bittermens Bitters newest product, Xocolatl Mole Bitters. A neat way to add quite a substantial kick to any drink, the mole bitters are showing up in new cocktails like the tequila-based Chipilo at Brooklyn’s Buttermilk Channel and several options at Manhattan’s Death + Co. (Photo: Vidiot)

7. Sriracha

Every Top Chef contestant’s favorite secret ingredient can save a cocktail menu too, as in “El Scorcho,” a fiery mix of habanero infused vodka, sriracha, and jalapeno foam at Bend, Oregon’s Blacksmith restaurant. The sauce also makes a great replacement for Tabasco in bloody Marys — the blog White on Rice Couple has a great recipe, and if you want to get super-serious, check out their instructions on how to make sriracha from scratch. (Photo: White on Rice Couple)

6. Chinese Five Spice

A Chinese five spice grilled lemon garnishes the Fortune Teller at Bar Pleiades in New York.

Another ingredient Chinese chefs may be shocked to discover in American cocktails, C5S is showing up both as a garnish, as in the Fortune Teller drink served at the Surrey Hotel‘s new Bar Pleiades in New York, and as the basis of a drink, such as Imbibe magazine’s Five-Spice Fizz. (Photo: Bar Pleiades)

Next: Top 5 New Things to Put in Your Drink

in Drinks / Eggs / Endless Cocktails / Featured / Lists / Trends 13 comments
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Hot Carb-on-Carb Action in the Buff

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It’s an unwritten rule of lunchtime that whatever food you’re eating should be somehow encased in a layer of bread or alternate form of carbohydrates. Yet despite the waning popularity of the Atkins diet, few establishments are bold enough to up the ante and serve lunch encased in two layers of said carbs. You wouldn’t wrap a quesadilla in a taco shell, throw a bagel sandwich on a sub roll, or stuff spaghetti inside a bread bowl. OK, well at least most of you wouldn’t do that last one.

Fortunately, Jamaicans (well, specifically the Jamaican Buff Patty lunch counter by my house in Brooklyn) observe no such standards of carbohydrate restraint. I was shocked/delighted to learn that their patties — which come with beef, veggies or jerk chicken inside — are not only surrounded by a crispy fried shell, but that shell is then wrapped inside a hefty hunk of coco bread. Insane? Genius? Both, I say. You get crispy carbs and doughy carbs in each and every bite. Now that’s what I call a lunch.

PS – this concoction costs a whopping $2.50 — cheapest lunch ever.

PPS – Yes, I went for a 5-mile run afterwards. No, I don’t think that burned off all the carbs I consumed.

in Featured / Restaurants 3 comments
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Feed Us Back: Comments of the Week

sarah-palin

– Our Alaskan mystery eater was a little easy to guess, but too great to pass up. Where are the moose burgers, Sarah? Good job guessing, Amelia! You win a copy of Trish Magwood’s cookbook. Send us your address!

– This week’s other guessing game, Quotable Brooklyn, had most of you convinced I made up the quote about bacon (too obvious) but those of you who guessed number 7 were correct: “You might not believe this, but I can remember a time when you had to bike halfway across Fort Greene to find a decent stick of organic butter.” This must have been a little tougher than the Sarah Palin guessing game, because even Edible Brooklyn editor Gabrielle wasn’t sure:

I’m the editor of Edible Brooklyn, the main person responsible for, as you say, “the place where the pomposity of food writing and the pretentiousness of living in Brooklyn collide” and I am laughing out loud! To be fair, 5 of your 9 quotes are from one interview, a musician’s stream-of-thought quips about what’s in her fridge. But the point is right on – you nailed us! Well done. PS The fake line is #7 right–or is it #9? I’ve already forgotten!

– Finally, JoeHoya and Alex offer up some currant cooking tips, but keep ’em coming – we’ve got a ton of these things!

in Politics 0 comments
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