Category: Reviews

Have you ever waited for 4 1/2 hours for a piece of cake? I have. Today. Cake Man Raven popped that cherry.

Cake Man Raven's shop is just a hot little storefront with French doors blockaded by cooling racks and a front door blockaded by an empty refrigerated display case. There are no chairs, save a few metal park-style benches on the sidewalk. There's no a/c, so the icing tends to ooze in the oven-heated room. And today, there were no cakes.

I went at 4:20, waited for 20 minutes only to be told that there would be no slices of cake available for another 30 minutes. I came back 30 minutes later, only to be told that there would be no red velvet cake for another 15 minutes. I came back 45 minutes later, only to be told that red velvet cake was sold out, and that they didn't even know when it might come out again. Finally, I returned at 8:30 to relieve Doug who had been waiting on line with a dozen like-minded, annoyed patrons for a half hour. People were pissed. I was annoyed.

A woman in front of me spoke sternly to the kid behind the register for not having more cake prepared for all of the customers lined up outside the restaurant.

"Uh-uh," she said, "Put that cake in the fridge to set it. I don't want my cake sliding around. We waited this long, we can wait a few minutes more."

She turned to the throng lined up behind her. "Right? We waited this long. You gotta speak your mind." When one cake with nuts came out, she began bagging the clamshelled slices of cake, passing them to people behind her, and passing the cash to the listless youth at the counter.

"Tell Cake to call me. Tell him I had to organize for y'all. Tell him Kativa wants to have a word with him."

I have to thank Kativa for taking charge because finally, after 4 1/2 hours of trying, I got my cake. Was it worth the wait? I don't know if any cake is worth a 4 1/2 hour wait, but this one was pretty fucking fantastic. Even though it's a touch too sweet for my taste, it's still probably the best red velvet cake I've ever had. Still slightly warm from the oven, the blood red cake had a rich cocoa flavor (likely made with the industrial sized bag of Hershey's cocoa powder which I spied on their shelf) and super buttery, unctuous moistness with a spongy crumb. The sugary cream cheese frosting, melting in the heat, had just the lightest tang and the tiny grit of powdered sugar.

Even so, it was too hot to be waiting around for hours for a piece of cake. I won't do it again. At least I won't do it again this week.

Cake Man Raven
708 Fulton St., Brooklyn
718-694-2253
C to Lafayette Ave.

Molly Ringwald, frozen margaritas, and my own motley crew? Dreamy. I'd love for the frozen margaritas to be $5 instead of $7.25, but you really can't argue with $2.50 draft beers and plenty of outdoor seating in a fun pastel plaza. The outdoor solar-powered kitchen-in-a-truck and stationary bike-powered smoothie stand were joined by community artisans selling jewelry and clothing. My great, no-nonsense grilled pork chop special ($13) came with a delicious mound of tomato confettied guac, yellow rice, and black beans into which I accidentally poured half a cup of Tapatío. Their dry-barbecued corn on a stick with mayo, cotija cheese, chili and lime is quintessential. We got drunk quickly in the summer heat, then camped out at a bench table next to the pretty little gurgling fountain until the meager city sprinkling of stars came out. We even stayed well into the night to watch their Sunday night movie (The Breakfast Club) play on the peach-painted side of the building next door. (Which character was I in high school? my friend Meg asked. Definitely Anthony Michael Hall.) This is why I summer in Brooklyn.

Habana Outpost
757 Fulton St.
718-858-9500
C to Lafayette Ave.

Like a pristine lily pad in a yuppie scum filled pond, Jadis may be one of the few civilized places left on the Lower East Side. Going out on a Friday or Saturday night in Manhattan usually comes with a few guarantees -- a fight for the bartender's attention, a scramble for a bar stool or booth, a hoarse voice from yelling my conversation over speakers blasting the latest banal indie rockers, and an empty wallet at the end of the night. So Jadis is a great new discovery, courtesy of my friend Heej -- exposed brick walls and a scalloped brick ceiling; tiny, flickering oil lamps; bottles and bottles of wine in glass cabinets; dark stained tables with low stools and a huge black leather modular couch. Where else on the LES can you roll in with a birthday party of 12 on a Saturday night, commandeer two roomy tables for a solid six hours, and tear through seven bottles of prosecco, as well as a great selection of wines by the glass, Kronembourg in bottles and Stella on tap? Need to stave off the hangover? Share a generous cheese board with green grapes and baguette rounds ($16), or a charcuterie board with smoked duck, salami, duck liver mousse, and country paté ($16) with everyone at the table. Our friendly, lovely Spanish waitress even brought us all glasses of ice water between popping prosecco corks -- a civilized gesture in this age of high table turnover. The uncrowded crowd was mostly nice Asian i-banker kittens and the geeky men who chase them, allowing us to be the most obnoxious group in the place. Over two dozen of Jadis's full bottles of reds, whites, and sparklings from around the world go for less than $30, so even a long evening like ours was pretty easy on the wallet. It also appears to still be off the Jersey weekend warrior/art school trustafarian radars, making for a pleasantly low-key, adult hang. Jadis is everything that other place down the street was supposed to be and more.

Jadis
42 Rivington between Forsythe and Eldridge
F to 2nd Ave., D to Grand St.

I love culinary cultural exchanges. French occupation of Vietnam gave us Vietnamese sandwiches on airy rice flour baguettes. According to a story my friend Miho loves to tell, an Indian prince fell in love with a Japanese woman and stayed in Japan to be with her. She, in turn, created Japanese-style curry to sate her lover's craving for the food of his homeland. In Alsace, sauerkraut and wurst-laden choucroute celebrates the cultural mesh of German and French.

So when I was walking down 32nd St. and saw a menu advertising ja jang myun at Shanghai Mong, I had to stop in and try some. Ja jang myun is a delicious noodle dish made with spaghetti-width Chinese wheat noodles and a black bean gravy with vegetables and meat. According to Asia Food's website, ja jang myun is a Korean dish with Chinese origins. Actually, the only place I ever tried it was at a Chinese restaurant that may or may not have been run by Koreans on Shattuck Ave. in Berkeley, CA. I thought about that dish from time to time, the way one thinks of an excellent one night stand. "I wonder if that ja jang myun's still as good as I remember."

Shanghai Mong advertises itself as a Shanghai fusion restaurant. It's an odd place, the wait staff bedecked in Pearl River Mart chinoiserie, tufts of astroturf serving as bright green accents against the caricature Chinese reds and lacquer blacks. The restaurant is shaped like a wrist watch, the front and back rooms like long watch band strips. Oddest of all is the watch face middle room. Individual seating is in the round, with diners facing out at the circumference of the room, not in. In the middle of the watch face is a brown velvet button of a couch where I guess people are supposed to hang out and wait for their tables.

In a way, this circular middle room makes Shanghai Mong an ideal, no-nonsense place to eat when you're alone, as evidenced by the many Korean businessmen who came and went as I sat there with my ja jang myun. But, like any other New Yorker, I hate sitting with my back to the room. Even more disconcerting was having to stare at the iridescent tile on the wall twelve inches in front of my face the whole time I was eating. I like being alone with my thoughts, but I don't like being cooped up with them.

The ja jang myun? It was aight, and cheap at $5.95. Soft, elastic yellow wheat noodles were nestled under a robe of black bean gravy with a sort of burnt sugar sweetness, studded with overcooked potato, tender cubes of zucchini, caramelized onion, and tough little chips of what could have been air dried beef or dried scallops or shoe leather for all I know. I should have ordered what the guy next to me had -- a genius bowl divided by a wall down the middle, one half filled with ja jang myun, the other half filled with spicy noodle soup with seafood. I think it's only a dollar or two more than the plain ja jang myun.

The search continues for the delicious ja jang myun of my memory. Anybody have any recommendations?

Shanghai Mong
30 W. 32nd St. (Koreablock) between 5th and Bway
BDFV to 34th St.
6 to 33rd St.

Battered chicken skin was thin, hot, crisp and excellent, and stayed that way for a while -- I don't know what people are griping about. Maybe it wasn't as salty as I'm used to, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Bird was really moist and tender.

The sides could use some help, though. Napa cabbage slaw with sweetened vinegar and limp worms of red onion was just meh. Doug's mac and cheese was not what we'd hoped it would be -- soft, collapsed pasta tubes tossed with what tasted like smoked gouda. It's not for me.

I think the thing to do is to make your own sides, bring them to the apartment of a friend who lives in Chelsea, and order bird delivery. Though at that point, and at $21 for 8 small pieces, you should probably just learn to make your own fried chicken.

Dirty Bird To Go
204 W. 14th St.
btwn 7th Ave. and 8th Ave.

Next time, just shove a tortilla chip in my mouth and mug me. Damn the Times. Those summer drinking articles just made me thirsty for margaritas in the sun. Six of us headed to Mercadito Grove for after work refreshments.

But I'm sorry, was my shirt so dirty that I needed to be taken to the cleaners? Did I look like I wanted to be bent over a table and banged with a tejolote? To quote Pulp Fiction, DO...I...LOOK...LIKE...A BITCH? My snack-sized beer-battered tilapia tacos with fussy chipotle napa cabbage slaw ($13.50) could have used more lime, more onion, more chili, more anything. Shrimp tacos in a spicy red sauce with slivers of avocado ($13.50) were more flavorful, though there were probably about five shrimp total in the four teeny tacos. A scant cup of mashed avocado masquerading as guacamole was salt free, lime free, onion free, pretty much flavor free -- and at $9.50, far from free (and so very inferior to the one I made in Hudson). The $32.50 small pitcher of white sangria could have been pruno for all the sugary fruit cocktail in it.

Okay, the margaritas weren't bad, but again, they weren't as good as the ones we were making this past weekend. I did like the tres cítricos with fresh grapefruit, lemon, orange and sprinkling of chili powder ($9.50) -- I'm stealing the idea for a cocktail party.

But the bill came out to a whopping $270 for six (only four actually ate dinner) with tax and tip. $270, and I was still hungry and completely sober! Even by insane New York standards, that is way too rich. We paid $270 for the luxury of breathing in exhaust fumes from 7th Ave., noshing on a bland cabbage patch doll's meal and fending off a sleepwalking junkie repeatedly trying to hock $1 roses. (His brilliant sales pitch: "Uno, uno," even though Spanish was clearly neither his first language nor ours.)

We could have gotten 100 larger and infinitely more delicious tacos at Tacos Matamoros, and we still would have had enough money leftover to buy TWO bottles of Don Julio tequila Anejo. I work way too hard for my money to be throwing it away on such utterly forgettable food.

When I was in Mexico City, we went to a mercadito at the edge of town to eat the best $2 octopus tostadas on god's great earth, the tentacles pounded and boiled into tender submission, seasoned brightly with vinegar and herbs, and piled high on a thick, crunchy fried corn tortilla.

"Do you think this kind of food would sell well in America?" the vendor asked me.

I told him it would. I told him we needed him. People would line up to sponsor his visa once they'd tasted his tinga. But a town that allows the mediocre Mercadito to thrive and expand doesn't yet deserve his pulpo.

Mercadito Grove
100 7th Ave. South at Grove
1 9 to Christopher St.

The creamy little petit four sized goma tofu was very tahini-y and not very tofu-y.  I was hoping for something more along the lines of the delicate black sesame flecked tofu I once got in a depachika, one of the fancy food basements in Tokyo department stores.  At $10, the cod with yuzu could have used a little more cod.  Our piece was about the size and thickness of a McDonald's hamburger patty.  5 golf ball potato croquettes were crispy and excellent.  The little pyramid of fried squid rings was spicy and tart with plenty of ponzu.  6 tiles of eggplant tarred with hoisin sweet red miso couldn't be prettier.  The tasting glass, like a long shot, of dai gin jo sake was a perfect Tuesday after work libation, but I'll be damned if I can remember what the sake was called. 

But how did the bill for this elfin meal come out to $28 per person with tip?  That's all we ate, between two people, plus my friend Tati's small bottle of beer and a bowl of rice each.  I could have easily eaten two more of everything.  By myself.  I know, I know, it's an izakaya, it's more about grazing.  Still, this whole small plates trend may be good for getting wasted, but it sucks for getting full.  Gyu dokko?

Kasadela
647 E. 11th St. btwn Ave. B and Ave. C
212-777-1582
L Train to 1st Ave., 14th St. Bus to the east side

Everywhere is crap on a Friday night in Manhattan, but no neighborhood is quite so crap as the Meatpacking District.  The carcasses and butchers may be gone but the meat market is still alive and thriving.  It's like the Path train just vomits all of New Jersey and midtown onto the cobblestone corner in front of Pastis.  My friend Hee Jin noted, "There are too many women wearing wedges here."  But her husband Francis's sister Rosie was in town from London, and Shannon's friend Cillian was in from I don't know where, and we figured we'd better start drinking instead of just standing around trying to figure out where to go. 

We tried our damnedest to have a good time, but four margaritas later I was still stone cold sober.  We may as well have been at Scores for all the salivating Brooks Brothers men and the unsubstantial cheesecakes trying to siphon off their money.  When I went to wait on the long line for the two unisex bathrooms, a fratty dude just two minutes from the front of the line snuck behind a bunch of stacked chairs and took a piss in the corner of the room.

Later, one chambray-clad lad who looked like the before picture in a teen Proactiv infomercial was eagerly ramming his tongue down the throat of a Mystic Tanned, Jean Louis David-blond piece of mutton dressed as lamb.  They spent the evening locked in this carnal embrace, teetering over our table like a bad internet MILF porn scene. 

The second I walked up to the bar to get a drink, some slurring sot would try to get some eye contact with ladykiller lines like, "Can't get the bartender's attention, huh?"  As the bartender prepared some champagne topped orange fizz for a tittering airhead pushing her tetas together on the bar, a navy-blazered tubesteak with a Kramer 'do thought he'd found the perfect opportunity for some stimulating conversation with me.

NAVY TUBESTEAK:  So, is that drink for you?

ME: [using my peripheral vision]  No. [Full stop.]

NT: What is it?

ME:  I don't know, looks like a headache to me.  [A mistake.  Shouldn't unnecessarily engage with jokes.]

NT: [Pause.]  The drink looks like a headache.

ME: [Pause.]  Yyyyyeah.

Later, Rosie and I watched as one desperate, prowling, long-locked bean pole with  deliberately ripped jeans weaved his way through the tables to the center of the garden to check everybody out.  He was about as subtle as a roach paralyzed by the flicked-on kitchen light in the middle of a white linoleum floor.  For this we pay through the nose for our cocktails?  The whole scene was so sad that it wasn't funny anymore. Heej was about one beer away from getting into fisticuffs with the lot of them.  If this is sex and the city, I may never get laid.

It's too bad.  Le Jardin is airy and outdoors: it wouldn't be a bad place for an overpriced after work drink in the sunshine.  Only Doug had gotten there at 6:30, only to be told that they'd open at 7:00.  He went again at 6:58, only to be told they'd open at 7:00.  He went again at 7:10, only to be told they'd open at 7:30. 

Far better were the weak but delicious frozen guava margaritas in the slender garden at La Palette on Greenwich Ave.  It would have been the perfect Friday evening if they hadn't kicked us out at 11:00.

Le Jardin
10 Little West 12th Street
between 9th Ave. and Washington St.
212-645-5370

La Palette
94 Greenwich Avenue
between W. 12th St. & W. 13th St.
212-366-6110

Had dinner at Momofuku on Saturday and tried pig tails for the first time.  They were deep fried til crisp and marinated in a sweet reddish sauce. "Like General Tso's chicken," my dining companion said.  But the bones in the tails are disconcertingly similar to human phalanges, so it's kind of like stripping stringy meat off a skeletal finger.  A big pile of tail bits are served with a bowl of cool pickled Asian pear slices for $13.

By the way, David Chang is getting all the Times press for Momofuku, but has anyone else noticed how hot co-chef Joaquin Baca is?  Thank heavens for open kitchens.

Went to iCi in Fort Greene with La Doug for Brooklyn Restaurant Week. 

A la carte:
New York Magazine-lauded chicken liver schnitzel consisted of three hunks of organ clothed in panko and deep fried, served with a dollop of bland aioli and some overly sweet caramelized onions.  Nice crunch, a little oily, and not bad -- but I'd rather have 2nd Ave. Deli's chopped chicken liver on rye with red onion (R.I.P.) or Balthazar's chicken liver foie gras mousse.  Our 2 glasses of Raventos cava ($9/glass, bottle retails for $12) tasted day-old.

3 course prix fixe, $20.06 each:

Apps -- Doug's thinly sliced fluke carpaccio with mint shrank in an acidic pool of lemon juice.  My watercress salad with pickled onions and beet fragments was simple and straightforward, no complaints.

Mains -- Overcooked and underseasoned sliced duck breast dominoes were splayed over a thirst-inducing salt-potato pancake.  It was garnished with a couple of afterthought mustard greens and a pair of dookie-imposter stewed prunes.  Doug's skate was swimming in brown butter, also too salty and a little burnt, served with the same mustard greens and a scattered assortment of indeterminate diced veg.

Desserts -- Chocolate cake dessert was an enormous wedge of dark chocolate soft-cooked batter.  Translucent glutinous rice lent coconut rice pudding a lovely texture, with an elegant top note of kaffir lime leaf chiffonade (though the garnish is kind of indigestible and gets stuck in your teeth -- perhaps a little kaffir lime zest instead would be better?).

Service was slammed and it took a while for us to get our check (totally understandable considering it was restaurant week).  The room is quite elegantly done, with a fireplace, white walls, low ceilings, and sexy light sconces; but the quaint picture is marred by the collegiate servers in low rise jeans and tank tops.  The menu looks so promising, but the restaurant is ultimately betrayed by its own Brooklyn nonchalance.  iCi seems to suffer from a malaise shared by several Cobble Hill and Park Slope restaurants -- it's good in theory, uses all the right ingredients, has all kinds of good intentions front of house, but the final product still seems amateurish. 

A restaurant only accessible from the G train would have to be really fucking good to warrant the trip.  iCi is not that good, but if you live in the area and don't have other options, it's probably good enough.

iCi
246 Dekalb Ave. @ Vanderbilt Ave.
718-789-2778

G to Clinton-Washington