Dirt Candy (NYC)

“The Unbeatable Brunch!” À La Carte

  • Squash Biscuit: only time I’ve eaten a biscuit of this size and thickness and didn’t feel horrible afterward.

  • Spinach Croque Monsieur

  • The Canadian Cracker: a giant waffle covered in cheese. Kind of hard to get wrong. Loved the roasted tomato on top.

  • Breakfast Potatoes: I didn’t even order this. They just brought them over, an $8 side for free. They’re fried potatoes—enough said.

This was another one of their special menus in celebration of Dirt Candy’s 16th birthday. Nothing super creative; just solid brunch food (they used to serve brunch years ago) at a great price.

Revisit Rating:8/10

Dirt Candy (NYC)

Way Back Wednesday! Tasting Menu

  • Jalapeño Hush Puppies (maple butter): nothing surprising but inherently delicious.

  • Portobello Mushroom Mousse (truffled crostini & fennel compote): I think the proportions of the different accoutrements were a little bit off kilter, but once you assembled a bite, it was great. The presentation was also a bit impractical given the sauce all over the plate.

  • Carrot Risotto (carrot dumplings, carrot ribbons): another carrot dish they hit out of the park! I go my whole life hating carrots, but in their hands… it’s like a miracle ingredient. Other than the rice and the many variations of carrot preparation, I think there is nothing else in this dish. Yet it has such a cornucopia of varying sweetnesses, creaminesses, and textures.

  • Corn Grits (tempura poached egg, corn cream, huitlacoche): floored by two dishes in a row. I’ve never had huitlacoche before—it’s a fungus that grows on corn.

  • Lime Beurre Blanc Tofu (green ragout): and the good times have to end at some point. My least favorite course from my two Dirt Candy visits. The only times they falter are when they try to emulate a non-vegetarian dish, and that’s all this seems to be. Like a generic fish with a bland white sauce, but they’ve replaced the fish with tofu that has no taste other than salt.

  • Candied Grapefruit Pop!: that’s their exclamation point, not mine.

  • Popcorn Pudding (caramel popcorn): nowhere close to the dessert from last time.

  • The Great Wave (japanese whisky, ginger, tamarind, lemon)

This was a special one-day menu to celebrate Dirt Candy’s sixteenth year since opening. All the dishes came from the first couple menus they served at the restaurant. Overall, I thought it was very good but with less consistency than my previous visit. Higher highs (Carrot Risotto and Corn Grits) and lower lows (Lime Beurre Blanc Tofu). It’s still one of the most exciting restaurants in NYC—I very well might go to every one of their seasonal menus for now on.

There were no service snafus like during my last visit, but FOH could still use some polish. I was served by two people, and one server gave notably less in-depth explanations than the other server. When he served the tofu dish, I think he might have just said, “Tofu.” And I looked at him expecting him to continue, and he just gave me this look like what do you want from me and then left. There was a major catastrophe on the M train as usual, so I had to uber about half way there—ended up ten minutes late, but they were perfectly accommodating when I arrived.

Revisit Rating: 9/10

Dame (NYC)

  • Grilled Oysters with Green Chartreuse Hollandaise: delicious but gone instantaneously. Not worth the cost.

  • Heirloom Tomato Salad with Lobster & Tarragon: incredibly fresh and vibrant.

  • Fish & Chips: best fish and chips I’ve had. And each fry had an entire potato inside it.

  • Sourdough Bread & Butter

Rating: 8/10

Shmoné (NYC)

  • Hot Jerusalem Bagel (olive oil & Za’atar)

  • Pan Seared Chanterelle, Maitake & Lion's Mane (lemon ricotta & toasted almonds)

  • Stretchy Stracciatella Pyrex Lasagna: one of the best pasta dishes I’ve had! Very surprising. A bit curiously priced, but given it’s enough for two people, I’d certainly order it again.

  • Charcoal Grilled Octopus (brothy cranberry beans): this was like eating a tender steak. Belonged mainly to someone else at the table, but the couple bites I got were delicious.

  • Olive Oil Panna Cotta (candied pine nuts, fresh Zaatar leaves)

  • Honey Cake (labneh cream, salty honey syrup)

  • The Red Sea (arak cocktail)

A somewhat under-appreciated restaurant. Everything we ordered was excellent; not one miss. Service was on the more casual side, but they were very friendly. And they threw in two free shots at the end!

Rating: 9/10

Rezdôra (NYC)

  • Fett’unta (toasted bread with extra virgin oil)

  • Gnocco Fritto (prosciutto di parma, mortadella & pancetta): the ham and zeppole at Torrisi was better.

  • Cacio e Pepe in Emilia (little lettuces with pecorino dressing & cracked pepper)

  • Anolini di Parma (traditional meat filling with parmigiano sauce): did not like this one.

  • Grandma Walking Through Forest in Emilia (cappelletti verdi with roasted, sautéed leeks & black mushroom puree): this was very good. Noticeably al dente, that’s for sure, but it worked for me. Extremely heavy. I only needed three pieces of pasta to get my fill of this.

  • Uovo Raviolo di Nino Bergese (corn puree, finferli & tartufo nero): also quite good. Out of the three pastas we ordered, this was the least chewy/had the least bite to it.

I think the over-salted/over-cooked/small portions accusations are definitely unfounded, at least with my visit, but it’s probably not a place I’d revisit. Italian is just a very competitive cuisine in this city. Better pasta elsewhere in NYC for cheaper (Rezdôra’s biggest sin is definitely the pricing).

Rating: 6/10

House (Brooklyn)

Tasting Menu

  • Charred Manganji Pepper Crudités (manganji pepper, tofu, chickweed, capers, cornichon, anchovies, olive, walnuts, scallion oil): personally, I’m not a fan of peppers across the board for whatever reason. I just don’t taste anything. This is very much me, not them. But the rest of the dish was delicious and the plating was gorgeous, possibly the best of the night in that regard.

  • Yellowtail Tartare & Peach Sorbet (yellowtail, caviar, peach, shallot, kale, rice cracker, monaka): I will be thinking about this one for a while. Salty, sweet, the perfect amount of confrontation of my expectations. Reminded me of the Caviar Kim at Jua but three times better (not to denigrate Jua overall; I love that place).

  • Stuffed Squid & Cherry Tomatoes (small squid, cherry tomatoes, couscous, red onion, paprika, harissa, coriander, starflower): I remember thinking this was solid in execution, but I don’t recall many details a few days later.

  • Mozzarella Burrata & Strawberry (burrata, strawberry tuile, pomegranate, blackcurrant sauce), pictured: this felt more like a dessert course, but given the actual dessert course was also cheese and fruit, it makes sense that they wouldn’t want to sequence them next to each other. If they wanted to lower the price of the menu a little bit, it would make sense to drop this dish, but maybe I’d protest. I loved it.

  • Grilled Eggplant with White Miso Hollandaise (eggplant, bottarga, white miso, bonito stock, pistachio, ginger): probably the least memorable of the night for me since it’s pretty similar to something I had at Dirt Candy recently. My dining companion loved it though.

  • Red Sea Bream Spring Roll with White Leek Sauce (red sea bream, white leek, spring onion, hijiki, golden mustard): didn’t reinvent the wheel, but certainly the most perfectly constructed spring roll I’ve had in my life. Packed with perfectly cooked red sea bream, it’s not the kind of spring roll you just pop in your mouth.

  • Grilled Shou Koji Venison with Mushrooms & Truffles (venison, burdock, truffle, chili pepper, mushroom, truffle, chrysanthemum, soy sauce koji, beef stock): the venison was so tender, it was hard to believe. 

  • Eel Pilaf (eel, eel stock, bonito stock, japanese pepper): what a wonderful way to end the savory courses. Just fills you up with warmth. I’ve read that previously they used foie gras, but I wouldn’t replace the eel with anything.

  • Blue Cheese Terrine & Apple Compote (gorgonzola, cream cheese, fresh cream, apple, cinnamon, olive oil): maybe I’m uncultured, but how is this blue cheese? Where’s the blue? Just completely smooth and sweet, pitch perfect way to end the meal. By the end, the dishes were exactly calculated for my stomach. I ate 100% of every course, and while I had no desire for any other food that night, I could still walk home.

Unbelievable that this place doesn’t have a star. I think it might even deserve two.

I also had three cups of tea as part of the tea tasting (for $50 which I thought was decent): Matcha (Yame/Fukuoka), Gyokuro (Yame/Fukuoka), Japanese Black Tea (Saitama). The black tea was probably my favorite. They also gave us complimentary tea at the end, but I don’t know the details of it.

Service was excellent. We talked to the FOH quite a bit, and they knew so much about what they were serving and they genuinely seemed to love what they were doing (or they were good at faking it). The location is a bit strange, at the back of a shop. We weren’t sure where to go exactly when we showed up a few minutes early. Then 6:00pm on the dot, they slid over a wall, and there was the counter seating. Just enough seating for eight people, very intimate.

Rating: 10/10

Winner (Brooklyn)

  • Monkey Bread (buttermilk glaze): healed my soul. Could have easily cried if I wasn’t with company.

  • Fried Chicken Sandwich (panko crusted chicken breast, spiced fennel slaw, pickles and Duke’s mayo on sourdough pullman): excellent.

Rating: 9/10

Torrisi (NYC)

  • Charred Clam Boule: excellent.

  • Italian and American Hams with Zeppole: great but a bit too one note for me.

  • Pork Belly Sandwich: eh. Kind of an odd inclusion on the menu. Way too much—I only ate half of my half.

  • Tortellini Pomodoro: unbelievable. Delicious and yet somehow light as air. I’ve never had something like this that wasn’t very heavy. Not insanely expensive all things considered?

  • Dover Sole Francese: wasn’t a fan of the breading or the sauce.

  • Affogato: kind of designed to be something I’d hate yet I could have eaten the whole giant thing if it weren’t for the meal that had come before it.

Service was a bit gruff and quick paced but not unpleasant. Seemed like they were a bit understaffed, maybe because it was lunchtime. Decor is amazing and matches the price (and somehow the bill came out lower than I expected). I’d say service was below their reputation while the food and ambiance were equal to it or very slightly below.

Rating: 8/10