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04/18/2001 Archived Entry: "Great Restaurant Dishes"

When I was the restaurant critic of the New York Daily News, every few months I would write a column called “The Best Things I’ve Eaten,” which singled out dishes the taste of which I couldn’t get out of my head, off my palate ... however I should be expressing it. I have eaten more than the usual number of such memorable dishes in restaurants during the last few weeks. So, like old times, I’m putting them down in print. You should know, too, that all of these dishes are served at restaurants I can recommend wholeheartedly overall.

Macaroni with Foie Gras and Cepes:
I keep saying that this was the best bowl of pasta I’ve ever eaten made by a Frenchman. (There’s a qualifier for you.) On the menu at D’Artagnan Rotisserie it is called, in French, maccaronade, and it is a big bowl of rigatoni with cubes of sautéed foie gras and chunks of fresh cepes (called porcini in Italy), with nothing more than the mingled juices of both. I ate it very, very slowly to savor every last bite, swooning all the way.

In general, I love this brand-new restaurant, for which I broke my rule of not going to a new restaurant until it is six months old. It is owned by Arianne Daguin and her partner George Faisan, who are old friends of mine. One makes exceptions for one’s friends, especially when they are as talented, quality-minded, and generous of spirit as these two. In truth, I couldn’t wait to go. Their company, D’Artagnan, put foie gras on the map in the United States – so to speak. They also market, wholesale and retail, other parts of the duck – leg joints as confit or preserved duck, boneless fresh duck breasts, smoked duck breasts -- free-range chickens, Bayonne ham (from Bayonne, New Jersey, not France, as Arianne likes to joke), various foie gras products, and more. All are available in the restaurant. Arianne, who is from Gascony, the southwest region of France where foie gras reigns, has brought all the restaurant’s furnishings in from her home region, including antique upholstered chairs, armoires, the table linens and flatware. There is a section in the front of the store that sells their products and has sandwiches and salads for taking out. However, the other item I wouldn’t miss while sitting at one of the commodious tables (or even for take-out, now that I think about it), is the so-called foie gras burger, actually a sautéed slice, not hash, of foie gras, on a soft brioche bun with sautéed onions and apples. Ooh la la!

By the way, many local chef’s are hanging out at D’Artagnan after 10, 10:30 p.m. Arianne even keeps a chef’s table set for them. They are D’Artagnan’s wholesale customers. Now they get to enjoy their fill of the company’s great products cooked by someone else.
D’ARTAGNAN ROTISSERIE: 152 E. 46th St., near Third Ave.; (212) 687-0300.


Tagliatelle with Fresh Alaskan King Crab
David Pasternack, the chef at Esca, the Italian-style fish restaurant owned by Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich, is constantly on the lookout for the freshest ocean products in the world. Hence, you’ll find fresh anchovies and fresh sardines from the Mediterranean alongside fresh ling and fluke from the waters off of Montauk, Long Island. He even brings in fish he’s caught himself on the weekends, often serving this precious catch raw with just drizzles of extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice, or maybe a pinch of crisp, julienne radish to punctuate the flavor and texture.

David knows that great seafood demands simple treatment and when he got a shipment of fresh Alaskan King Crab – my god, as far as I know, it has never existed except as frozen crab in New York – he did blessedly little with it. He just sautéed it in a little butter and oil, then tossed it with his exquisitely thin and narrow egg pasta. You could taste the Pacific mixed with butter. Heaven! He has the crabs in holding tanks in the basement, so they should be there for a short time to come. Even if they aren’t, however, you can’t do better than Esca in the Theater District/Time Square area. I can’t wait to order David’s fritto misto (mixed seafood fry) again.
ESCA: 402 W. 43rd St., at Ninth Ave.; (212) 564-7272


Sauteed Red Mullet Filets on Chick Pea Puree
Combining fish or shellfish with legumes is a fashionable thing to do in Southern Italy, and it is the food of Salerno, just south of Naples, that is the specialty of San Pietro. Mixing the bounty of the sea and the mountains, which is where the best beans and chickpeas grow, is a relatively new idea because, in the days before super-highways (Autostrade), the twain never met. People in the mountains cooked mountain ingredients. People by the shore, cooked seafood.

In fact, the first time I realized that combining the two was a trend in southern Italy was in Avellino, in the mountains east of Naples. I was surprised that the chef was cooking so much fish and shellfish, and that it was of such a high, fresh quality. Then he explained that the fish market in Pozzuoli, the largest in southern Italy, was, on the new road, a mere hour away (well, the way Italians drive). It was no longer a big deal for him to go the fish market in the morning. Anyway, at San Pietro, the red mullet, a firm, flavorful fish that is often grilled whole, was cooked sublimely well by chef Antonio Bruno (his brother, Girardo, is the host) and the filets were arranged on a mound of silky chickpea puree flavored, most unusually for a fish dish, with Parmigiano-Reggiano. Judiciously combining cheese and fish is another fashionable thing to do around Naples, too. One young chef told me that his grandmother always served mussels cooked in tomato sauce sprinkled with sharp, grated pecorino (sheep’s milk cheese), and that it was only at the end of the 20th century that people stopped doing it.
SAN PIETRO: 18 E. 54TH St., near Madison Ave.; (212) 753-9015


Fricassee of Sautéed Wild Mushrooms with Double Smoked Bacon and Bone Marrow and Roasted Local Skate (on the wing) with Lobster Coral, Lemon, Capers and Brown Butter
Chef Vincent Barcelona’s Seven (also owned by the Irish-born restaurateur –ing Conroy brothers, Ian, Niall, and Simon) is one of the many worthwhile restaurants that have slipped through the critical cracks because there’s a mandate at New York’s daily and weekly publications, the ones where the important restaurant reviews run, to review only new restaurants. Once a place is six months old it can forget about every seeing the light of print. My friend, chef Steve Santoro, who is going to be running the Italian restaurant at the new Colavita Italian Center at the Culinary Institute of America, is a mentor of Vincent’s and tipped me off to this truly great restaurant. No expense has been spared to transform the awkward space into several inviting, contemporarily smart eating areas – Bravo! to designer Richard Bloch of Yui + Block Design – including a two-story high bar with the largest Waterford crystal chandeliers you are likely ever to see. Those are, of course, a bow to the Conroys’ Irish heritage.

Vincent Barcelona’s food is what my nephew, Brian Alexander, has dubbed Cosmo Cuisine, which is to say cooking that is at once all-American and international. Unaffected is a word I would like to apply, and masculine. The presentations are simple, bold, and handsome. The sensational appetizer of mixed exotic mushrooms with batons of bacon and bits of bone marrow comes in its own casserole, a dish so rich that if you really wanted to be sensible you would follow it with a salad and call it dinner. But then you would miss ... well, there are so many things, but I have to have an order of skate all to myself the next time I eat here. Last time, it was passed around the table and I only got a few bites. Most unusually, perhaps uniquely, it is served on the wing, or the bone, so it is more succulent, less fibrous, than skate usually is. And chef Barcelona dresses it simply, but most originally, with the typical and ideal lemon, capers and brown butter but with the brilliant addition of lobster coral.
SEVEN: 350 Seventh Ave., at 30th St.; (212)967-1919.