Next Magazine - The Year in Dining

My top restaurant picks for 2012!

(Clockwise from top left; Alison Eighteen, Armani, Angolo Soho, Sushi Masaru.)

These dining rooms are as diverse in cuisine as they are in location, spread all over town and filling both intimate and soaring spaces. Our favorites were found in grand hotels, a designer emporium on Fifth Avenue, pauses through the Flatiron District and a little place on the Lower East Side.

Loi (208 W 70th St, 212-875-8600, RestaurantLoi.com) is filled with exploratory, fantastic fare in a soothing oasis that summons the Mediterranean. Slurpy spoons of creamy sea urchin are drizzled with fragrant olive oil, moussaka is slowly cooked with minced meat in béchamel sauce, and buttery Dover sole with charred eggplant, yellow peppers and zucchini is utterly captivating.

Dining in the beautiful Isola (9 Crosby St, 212-389-0000, IsolaSoho.com) at the Mondrian Soho hotel is nothing less than enchanting. Executive chef Victor LaPlaca mainly pulls inspiration from the Amalfi coast, serving porcini-stuffed ravioli love notes embraced by a heartbreaking veal ragu and a ravishing sirloin to be slowly savored like an indecent caramel.

Every Japanese dish presented by executive chef Masato Shimizu is a gift at 15 East (15 E 15th St, 212-647-0015, 15EastRestaurant.com). Cold soba noodles float in a rapturous pond of caviar, salmon pearls and sea urchin; sea urchin makes a poignant risotto with sumptuous matsutake mushrooms; foie gras and miso duck terrine borders on the obscene.

As the Olympics played on, we were thrilled to discover that Alison Price Becker returned victorious with Alison Eighteen (15 W 18th St, 212-366-1818, AlisonEighteen.com), offering velvety vichyssoise, lobster salad with citrus and yellow-curry-tinged yogurt sauce, hickory smoked Berkshire pork chops with peach-fig jam and outrageous polenta with wild mushrooms. Alison 18 scores an 18!

Housed in the Iroquois hotel, Triomphe (49 W 44th St, 212-453-4233, Triomphe-NewYork.com) is a classic New York supper club, led by forward-thinking chef Jason Tilmann: plump chicken livers with sherry-braised onions, scallops with melted foie gras butter, and richly red Chateaubriand with mustard laced béarnaise sauce to start; delectable chocolate croissant bread pudding with caramel toffee gelato to finish.

We swooned over the lobster at La Piscine (518 W 27th St, 212-525-0000, Hotel-Americano.com) this summer on the gorgeous rooftop at the Hôtel Americano. The crawling creatures from the grill are done to perfection, with a drizzle of fruity green olive oil. In between dips of hummus, tzatziki, baba ghanoush and taramosalata, take a dip in the pool.

During a torrential downpour, we lingered inside the starkly elegant Armani/Ristorante Fifth Avenue (717 Fifth Ave, 212-207-1902) over several glasses of excellent wine that prefaced tender stalks of white asparagus in silky chervil zabaglione and smoky duck carpaccio; sweet foie gras and duck agnolotti with sage and white butter sauce and olive-crusted lamb loin; ending with pristine orbs of white peach sorbet.

Grilled, moist quail at comfortable Angolo Soho (331 Broadway, 212-203-1722, AngoloSoho.com) certainly suited the fall season, so rich and full of warming spices, perched atop rugged, chewy faro and handsome dates. The pork chop was a meaty beauty, brilliant and of epic proportion, sharing the plate with caramelized fennel and heated cherry peppers.

We flew into Fatta Cuckoo (63 Clinton St, 212-353-0570, FattaCuckoo.com), having rescheduled reservations after Hurricane Sandy. A Pee-Wee’s Playhouse setting meets the Lower East Side with wonton-wrapped seasonal vegetable ravioli, juicy brined and battered fried chicken and a host of scrumptious desserts such as grasshopper mousse, made by owner Leah Tinari’s mother.

Owner and chef Henry Yang helped close out the year, transforming Chelsea’s Alpha into Sushi Masaru (169 Eighth Ave, 212-627-8887, SushiMasaru.com), a civilized dining room with the feel of an art gallery, befitting the beautiful plates of seared scallops with XO cognac and truffle oil, foie gras with supremed oranges, tuna tataki and fluke with seaweed and marinated rice.

First published in part in Next magazine. Photo credit: Gustavo Monroy.

15 East - Next Magazine Review

15 East
15 E 15th St (btwn Fifth Ave/Union Square West), 212-647-0015, 15EastRestaurant.com

Marco Moreira and Jo-Ann Makovitzky add to their culinary empire with the freshest fish hauled in from Japan by executive sushi chef Masato Shimizu.

My gal pal is simply stark-raving mad for sushi. I don’t know anyone who loves the raw devils more profoundly than she does. So it was my thrill on the evening we hastened to 15 East to have her sample executive chef Masato Shimizu’s fresh fish flown, which is flown in from Japan. We were, in a word, wowed. Everything was a small surprise—we were presented with wonderful gifts, which once opened, so to speak, proved to be utter delights, enlivening our taste buds, enriching our hearts and filling our stomachs.
The husband-and-wife team Marco Moreira and Jo-Ann Makovitzky moved their fabulous Tocqueville to a nearby location and reinvigorated its former address as 15 East with the assistance of architect Richard Bloch. Although we considered the crowded sushi bar in front, we made our way to a more capacious corner banquette in the modest dining room composed in an inviting color scheme of sand and slate with pale, billowy curtains.
Settling into cocktails, the Tokyo Manhattan struck my fancy with a light Japanese single-malt whiskey with a masculine uprising about the bosom that bandied about with sweet vermouth and brandied cherries. The summery caipirinha with passion fruit and lime had a good nose and was decidedly more feminine.
A convenient tray of creamy, buttery Kumamoto oysters started us off with sweet, icy ponzu granite and pickled turnips that held a resonating pine flavor in the final execution. Bluefin tuna was served two ways: as red velvet slices of sashimi and chopped toro tartare in a conspiracy with chive oil and paddlefish caviar.
We moved on to a carafe of a floral, elusive, wondrous chilled Koshi no Kanbai “Muku” sake that further enhanced the flavors of our ensuing dishes, which included a rapturous, benevolent and calm pond of caviar, ikura and uni floating along with cold soba noodles and wasabi paste. More sea urchin found its way into a poignant, soft risotto keenly matched with sumptuous matsutake mushrooms and pink wasabi root to set up our pasta course. We dispensed with our chopsticks, resorting to spoons so we could devour the dish more quickly. Eleven kinds of Japanese sea lettuces, in turns sturdy, woodsy, frilly, oceanic, fruity and sweet, cleansed our palates for the upcoming meat.
A tartare of chopped Kobe beef led the way with a presiding flavor of crisped garlic and a cracked, runny quail egg on top. Foie gras terrine bordered on the obscene with miso duck, raisins and brioche that I unashamedly admit I devoured in one orgiastic bite. Medium-rare smoky duck with shiitake mushrooms, sweet Japanese yams in a veal stock reduction and soy had us quacking with vigor.
Resist as we did at first, desserts were a foregone conclusion. Wavering between indulgences such as flourless chocolate cake, kabocha crème caramel, a watermelon parfait and green tea ice cream with matcha jelly and red beans, the crunchy tempura rice pudding won out with its fully rounded ice cream fashioned from sake. With nothing left to do but hug our gracious co-conspirators, we packed up and left 15 East to head home, back west.

Prices: Appetizers: $12-$29; Entrées: $18-$95; Alcohol:  wine, full bar, specialty cocktails.
Short Order: For aficionados of fish, modern Japanese cuisine off of Union Square proves to be a really great catch.
Peter’s Picks: Tokyo Manhattan cocktail; sea urchin and mushroom risotto; foie gras terrine with duck; caviar, sea urchin and salmon roe soba noodles.
Peter’s Pans: 15 East has not taken residence in my apartment building.

First published in part in Next magazine. 
Photo Credit: Michel Ann O'Malley