So far, the critical word on Butcher Bay, a mid-Atlantic-style seafood "shack" has been pretty bad. In my mind, it's a mixed bag (the fried chicken was greasy, for one thing), but a worthwhile mixed bag.

 For one thing, the lobster pot pie is mind-bendingly good--if you like Maine lobster, cream sauce and puff pastry this dish will make you happy. For another thing, the Chesapeake oysters and raw clams are beautiful, and the fried haddock in the fish and chips sports a craggy-crunchy, totally greaseless crust. I also thought the oyster chowder was nearly perfect.

Obviously, a seafood shack in the city is never going to capture the magic of a paper plate of fried clams on the beach. Still, sometimes you just crave good fried fish, nothing fancy, and Butcher Bay delivers it, at reasonable prices.

Click the second clickity above to read the whole review.

Butcher Bay
511 East 5th Street, 212-260-1333

This week, I review La Fonda del Sol, the new incarnation of the legendary 60s pan-Latin restaurant now open in the midtown Met Life building. Josh DeChellis is in the kitchen, and the new version of the restaurant serves Spanish food: mains and tapas in the dining room, solely tapas in the large bar area.

The bar looks like a more appealing spin on an office cafeteria: checkered floors and plastic furniture, while the dining room is carpeted and tableclothed. There's a big price difference, too: mains in the dining room run up to $38, while tapas in the bar go $4-$12.

These two seating areas are so different that they really seem like two entirely different restaurants, and I prefer the bar--the price point and attitude just seems more appropriate right now. I appreciated that it was lively, too, but most of all, I thought the tapas were bright, skillful and delicious, while something about the main courses, like lamb loin with a pepita crust, seemed staid and impersonal.

If you go, don't miss the short rib, which is braised in red wine and then scattered with little spheres of pomegranate juice that look just like pomegranate seeds, but without the seedy crunch. I also loved the whole fried shrimp.

Interestingly, in her review, the Daily News' Restaurant Girl had the opposite reaction.

Click the clickity above to read the whole review.

La Fonda del Sol
200 Park Avenue 212-867-6767

Floral Park, Queens is my new favorite neighborhood. It's on the eastern edge of the borough, bordering Nassau County, and it's home to a large and growing Indian population. There are well-stocked South Asian grocery stores, like Patel Brothers and Subzi Mandi, sweets and snacks shops, and many restaurants--from Pakistani kabob houses to Indian-Chinese spots.

In my column this week, I write about two of the best restaurants in the neighborhood: Mumbai Xpress and New Kerala Kitchen. If Mumbai Xpress were a little bit easier to get to, I would eat there everyday. It's definitely my favorite restaurant so far this year. It specializes in the fast foods and street foods of Mumbai, many of which I haven't seen anywhere else in New York. There are 99 dishes offered, ranging from the more familiar (samosa chaat, masala dosa) to the relatively obscure (misal pav, tokri chaat).

New Kerala Kitchen offers the rustic, fruit-seafood-and-coconut-heavy food of the Indian coastal state of Kerala. The dishes, such as kingfish fry and pulissery, are obviously made with care--well spiced and fresh, they taste like home cooking in the best sense. But each time we were there, the restaurant was nearly empty, and not everything on the menu was available. Still, it's worth a trip, and you'll be helping to keep them in business.

I know it's difficult to get to Floral Park, but supporting these completely delicious, affordable mom-and-pop restaurants really feels like the right thing to do right now. Make a day trip out of it, and I promise you won't be disappointed.

Click the clickety above to read the whole review.

Mumbai Xpress
256-05 Hillside Avenue
Floral Park, Queens, 718-470-0059

New Kerala Kitchen
267-05 Hillside Avenue
Floral Park, Queens, 718-470-6240

 

The sub headline on my story this week is "A new barbecue spot in the land of rotis," and that pretty much sums it up. Prospect-Lefferts Gardens is a paradise of West Indian and Caribbean food, and that's where prolific Brooklyn restaurateur Jim Mamary has recently opened a non-traditional but tasty barbecue spot. It was called Billy Sunday's, in a tongue-in-cheek ode to a famous prohibitionist, but apparently Billy was known for not only hating booze and being an evangelist, but also for being a rabid racist, soooo... that name was soon nixed in favor of Whiskey Sunday.

When I say Whiskey Sunday is non-traditional, I mean it's the sort of spot that serves blueberry-chile barbecue sauce, and cherry-picks styles, from St. Louis ribs to brisket. Shockingly, that blueberry-chile sauce is really good--and believe me, I wasn't so excited to try it. Generally, meats range from really good to mediocre, but I'd say it's a worthy neighborhood spot on the whole. There's a fantastic beer list, delicious, mammoth beef ribs, and a jokey rendition of banana pudding, complete with Reddi-Whip and Nilla Wafers, for dessert.

Click the clickity above to read the whole review.

Whiskey Sunday Bar-BQ
49 Lincoln Road, Brooklyn 718-282-7098

This week, my column is a review of Shang, acclaimed, Toronto-based chef Susur Lee's first New York restaurant.

Shang's food is a kaleidoscopic mix of Chinese-accented food from around the world--essentially, the cuisine of the Chinese diaspora ( an example: jerk chicken references the large Chinese population in Jamaica, and the preparation uses Chinese, French and Jamaican techniques). There are also straight-up traditional Chinese dishes, like a wonderful turnip cake with Asian eggplant and salted black bean, and a mind-blowing soft tofu custard with desert moss and seafood.

You might call the food fusion, because it combines flavors and techniques from the East and West, but that isn't quite accurate. The cooking here is really Lee's invention, the product of his Hong Kong childhood and peripatetic travels. So although some dishes are extremely overpriced, and others don't quite work, the food is, on the whole, a positive.

Unfortunately, Shang has instructed its servers to engage in the most relentless, high-pressure upselling that I've experienced recently. It starts as soon as you sit down: "Can I just get that Singapore Slaw on the table for you?" And continues throughout dinner, as you are strongly encouraged to double your orders, go for more cocktails and get another glass of wine. On one evening, our server actually seemed totally pissed off that we rebuffed his advances, while on another evening, we got the exact same spiels, but from a nicer server.

One night, chef David Chang sat down next to us, and, as I evesdropped, I noticed that he was getting a reflexive upsell too--even thought his meal might have been comped.

I understand that restaurants need to muddle through these difficult times, but a high-pressure upsell will only alienate customers, and/or drive them to spend more money than they wanted to, which makes it less likely that they'll come again.

Read the whole review by clicking the clickity above.

Shang
187 Orchard Street
212-260-7900

The makeshift taco stall inside Bushwick's Tortilleria Mexicana los Hermanos had a dedicated following of Chowhounds and cheap-eats-lovers for several years, but last year it was shut down by the killjoys at the health department for not being up to code. No one puts a stop to good food like the health department.

But the Lazaro family, which owns the factory, decided not to abandon the taco business, but instead to open a real, health-department-proof restaurant in one corner of the factory. It opened in November, and this week, I review the new, sit-down incarnation of the taqueria.

The chorizo is still the best taco there, and you can still watch the tortillas being made, as two walls of the restaurant are glass. There's tamarind Jalisco soda, little pots of fantastic red and green salsas, and a comfy diner counter, where you can sit on a stool and watch the cook at the griddle. They're not the best tacos in the city, but they are very fine tacos nevertheless, and the pleasure of the hot, fragrant just-made tortillas can't be beat.

Click the link above for the full review.

Tortilleria Mexicana Los Hermanos
271 Starr Street, Brooklyn,
718-456-3422

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