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Eating out | Burgers in the park at the Shake Shack

6 June 2011

Shake Shack, the burger, hotdog, and shakes kiosk in Madison Square Park, has been around for a while and become a New York institution, but every time I go I feel a special tingling of excitement conjured from the days when it had just opened, some seven years ago; when the idea of finding good food in a park in New York was a novelty.

It also coincided with the time I fell in love with New York. After I moved here in 1999 and for a good five years, my heart stayed in Berlin; I longed to move back. Then I fell in love. It occurred as a form of contradiction, because if there ever was a reason to stay in New York, it was work, which involved long hours and insufficient pay – as publishing often will – but was always interesting, stimulating, and surrounded by colleagues who not only became friends but family in an uprooted city.

And yet. I started to love New York after I stopped working, when Leo was born. When I finally had the time to while away mornings on a bench outside our local coffee shop and spend lazy afternoons on Sheep Meadow, trudge to the remaining block of Little Italy for good olive oil and aged balsamic vinegar or picnic along the Hudson River at dusk.

Every time I go to Shake Shack I get a whiff of it all. The lines are ridiculously long and I don’t mind. Part of loving New York is loving that people will stand in line for a burger for 50 minutes; it would be disingenuous to be exasperated by that.

I’d like to be able to talk about the hotdogs and the ‘shroom burger, the concretes and sundaes, but I can’t, because I haven’t tried them. I always order the same thing: a shack burger, crinkle fries, perhaps a lemonade, and sometimes a vanilla shake if there’s someone to share it with. It’s still just as good, seven years on, and a perfect park lunch if there ever was one.

Shake Shack

Madison Square Park
Southeast corner nr. Madison Avenue and East 23rd Street

Open daily 11am – 11pm

(Go to the www.shakeshack.com for other locations.)

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Related posts

Eating out | Up a cobbled street to Vinegar Hill House

Eating out | Trip to the Balkans at Kafana

Eating out | Brunch at Blaue Gans

Eating out | Fall soba noodles at Sobakoh

 

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Eating out | Up a cobbled street to Vinegar Hill House

19 May 2011

Vinegar Hill House lives on a narrow street that slants up from the East river, an unexpected cobbled block of low brick houses tucked between old factories at one end and uninspired housing towers at the other. It takes its name from the neighborhood, a small anachronistic sliver wedged between Dumbo and the Brooklyn Navy Yards.

From the outside it’s hard to guess which of the houses is a restaurant; inside it’s very much the kind of place you’d hope to walk into. It’s busy but not crowded, friendly without being overbearing, and thoughtful but not overly contrived. The food is simple, seasonal, and mostly very good.

We had no trouble getting a table when we arrived for brunch at 11.30. I ate good scrambled eggs with ramps and a side of completely addictive maple-glazed bacon. Thomas liked the special, a thick corn pancake with pieces of chorizo topped with cream and jalapeno. Balthasar polished off the quiche, though I would have quibbled that it was a bit eggy with too few pieces of asparagus. Leo found the breakfast sandwich with country ham, fried egg, and pepper jelly a bit too sweet, and I was forced to agree (though he did have to finish it). Louise scavenged bits and pieces from everyone.

Then came one large sourdough pancake with pecan bourbon sauce and ricotta, and it would barely have survived a minute under our four-sided fork assault had not the creamy yogurt with homemade preserves accompanied by a granola bar arrived as a propitious diversion. It was a family brunch. It was lovely.

Vinegar Hill House

72 Hudson Avenue (nr. Water Street)
Brooklyn, NY 11201

718-522-1018

Open Mon-Thu 6-11pm, Fri-Sat 6pm-11.30, Sun 5.30-11pm
Brunch Sat-Sun 11am-3.30pm

www.vinegarhillhouse.com

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Related posts

Eating out | Brunch at Blaue Gans

 

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Eating out | Trip to the Balkans at Kafana

21 March 2011

I went to Kafana only once but I think it’s worth telling. It was my introduction to Balkan food.

Kafana is a small, brick-walled restaurant in the East Village on Avenue C, barely a block away from where we lived when we first moved to New York (it didn’t exist then). I went with a group of friends with whom I go out regularly, about once every 2 months. We are a fairly international bunch and each time one of us chooses a restaurant from her home country.

Sabina is Bosnian but the good Bosnian restaurant in the city apparently closes too early, so she took us to Kafana. Kafana serves Serbian food, which, as I understand it, is similar to Bosnian food, with pork.

The dishes were served family style. The first plates arrived laden with spinach-and-feta–filled phyllo pies, but the star on the table was the Lepinja sa Kajmakom, an incredibly fluffy yeasted flatbread served, as advertised, “warm with creamy spread.” Then came platters of cured meats and cheese: smoked pork, beef sausage, but also cured lamb, and cow-milk feta that was pleasantly silky and mild.

More meats for the main course – peasant sausage; smoked pork loin; chicken kebabs; prunes stuffed with chicken livers or walnuts and cheese, all wrapped in bacon – were nicely complemented by simple salads. The classic Sopsa (tomato, cucumber, onion, and feta cheese) and Kupus – thinly sliced red cabbage dressed with oil and vinegar.

And, at some point, we ate Prebranac, Serbian baked beans. I can’t remember exactly when they arrived but I know I could think of little else for the rest of the evening, and they’ve been on my mind ever since. Coincidentally, I remember reading about Prebranac on Cooking Books a short while ago, and Sabina sent me her recipe – the lima beans are first cooked with onions and sweet paprika before being baked in the oven. So I now happily have two recipes on hand and no excuse not to make them.

The desserts were sour cherry pie, crepes with jam or chocolate, chocolate and walnut cake, and Zito, a barely sweetened mix of cooked wheat, sugar, and nuts. Slightly unusual at first and quickly quite addictive.

I will go back. To try more dishes, and, yes, eat Prebranac.

Kafana (KAΦAHA)

116 Avenue C (betw. 7th and 8th St.)
New York, NY 10009

212-353-8000

Open Mon-Thu 5pm-11pm, Fri 5pm-1pm, Sat 12.30pm-1am, Sun 12.30pm-11pm

Cash only

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Eating out | Brunch at Blaue Gans

22 February 2011

I have a soft spot for Kurt Gutenbrunner’s restaurants. Gutenbrunner is the Austrian chef/owner of Blaue Gans, Wallsé, and Café Sabarsky in New York (as well as Upholstery Winebar and Café Kristall, which I have yet to visit). An essential part of the draw is the excellent food, which is largely Austrian with a number of nods across the German border, but the spirit is clearly more that of a Viennese Café than a Bavarian beer garden. The other thing I like so much about these restaurants is the ambience. Each has a unique atmosphere but with similar qualities: at once elegant and ever so slightly old-fashioned – a touch European in the best sense; but also laid-back and congenial.

Blaue Gans, the most casual of the lot, is great for an easy dinner with friends, a simple lunch, and particularly for brunch. It’s spacious and relaxed – exactly the kind of place you hope to stumble into on a lazy weekend morning – and the menu options span a large spectrum, so everyone is likely to find something that suits their mood, from simple pastries to a Wiener Schnitzel – why not?

There is excellent weisswurst with pretzel, and bratwurst with sauerkraut. But it’s not just the sausages. I am infatuated with the Bibb salad with radishes, pumpkin seeds, and pumpkin-seed oil (in the evening the soups are tough competition). There are perfectly soft-boiled eggs in a glass and delicious Matjes herring “Hausfrauenart” – with apples. And then there is the creamed spinach, which can now be ordered as a side, so I get it every time, regardless of what else I’ve decided to order.

Incidentally, Blaue Gans is a good place to go with young children. Ours are always excited to go and invariably very welcome. They love the weisswurst (including Louise, who is already 11 months) and won’t leave without some Kaiserschmarren, the irresistible thick Austrian pancake cut into slivers and served with seasonal fruit compotes.

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Blaue Gans

139 Duane Street (between West Broadway and Church)
New York, NY 10013

212-571-8880

Open daily, 11am-midnight (bar until 2am)

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Eating out | Fall soba noodles at Sobakoh

12 November 2010

I don’t intend to write restaurant reviews, but I can’t resist the temptation of mentioning some of my favorite restaurants, so I thought I would share those memorable moments when a specific place perfectly satisfies a peculiar craving.

Fall is the season for soba in Japan, when the flour ground from freshly harvested soba (buckwheat) is most flavorful; it seems the Japanese seek out soba noodles in the fall the way Germans chase asparagus in the spring. Although I didn’t grow up with the concept of a season for flour, I’m happy to embrace the idea, and coincidentally (or perhaps not), every year when the leaves begin to change and the temperature drops I am irresistibly drawn to Sobakoh.

Sobakoh is a small restaurant in the East Village with a low key atmosphere and excellent food. The owner can often be seen making his soba in a little windowed nook between the bar and the street; the process is beautiful, and the result delicious. The bowls of soba noodles – hot or cold – are the best I’ve had, and there are other incredible dishes: appetizers such as gomaae (broccoli rabe with sesame sauce), age soba (deep fried soba with sea salt), and a memorable burdock salad that was not on the menu yesterday, but which the kitchen was kind enough to prepare nonetheless.

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Sobakoh

309 East 5th St. (between 1st and 2nd Aves.)
New York, NY 10003

212-254-2244

Open daily, 12pm-3pm and 5.30pm-10.45pm

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