Max

Fork and Spoon were recently invited to our first press dinner at Max. We were very nervous at this prospect. What if we hated it? Would people feel our review was credible if we were invited to review the restaurant and weren’t paying for our meal? We decided to continue our review process regardless of the situation. If we loved it we would say so, and if we hated it or disliked certain things, we would say that as well – as we always have.

Max is FABULOUS. Max’s owner, Luigi, is charming and endearing and so passionate about his restaurants, his vision, the food he serves, and where that food comes from.

We thought that, perhaps, the name Max came from one of his children, maybe his father, but no, Max is an Italian magazine. It’s about the hippest trends and the current cool people. After eating here, we can understand the name choice!

Max is a small Italian restaurant in the East Village. Charming and warm, you instantly feel at home when you walk through the doors. There is a lovely dining room in the front, a small bar in the back, with a few more tables, an enclosed patio that seats about 18 more and then a garden dining space (seating 50) that literally transports you to a small palazzo in Italy.

What isn’t made in house is made by small artisans throughout the City and imported from and made for Luigi in Italy. The bread comes from Il Forno in the Bronx. The pasta is made for them in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The extra virgin olive oil, mozzarella, and tomatoes are made for Max and flown into the States. Doesn’t get much more authentic than that. You couple all of these wonderfully fresh ingredients with Luigi’s passion and you understand how this restaurant has been around for so long.

Our adventure began with Salsetta and bread for dipping. The Salsetta is a dipping sauce that is presented to diners while they’re looking through the menu. A little taste of what treats are awaiting you. The Salsetta – loosely translated to a salsa or dip – is made from roasted tomatoes, lemon and orange peels, olives, extra virgin olive oil. Just incredible. So fresh. If the bowl had been a tiny bit bigger, we may have swam in it! If this is what the first step was like the rest of the adventure was going to be great!

Just so you know in advance, this was not a meal for the faint of heart! Excluding the Salsetta, the menu said we would sample 13 different dishes (in abundance) – but there were more – and at least 5 wines. By the way, the wine list is absolutely wonderful.

Our next taste was Crostino Toscano. Chicken liver pate on sliced, toasted bread. The pate was warm and creamy, rich and flavorful. There was a slight undertone of anchovy which cut the richness of the pate with a bit of saltiness.

Next on this adventure, Luigi brought Melanzane a Funghetto to the table. By the way we were mesmerized by Luigi and his descriptions of his dishes – but we digress just a bit – back to the melanzane. This dish is typically a southern Italian dish. The melanzane (eggplant) is cooked in the style of funghetto (mushrooms). First the eggplant is pan fried and then roasted low and slow with tomatoes and garlic and parsley and basil – some folks add capers and olives to the mix. As it roasts the eggplant becomes meaty and rich, taking on almost the texture of mushrooms (see? si!).  Wonderfully earthy dish.

Our next sampling was fabulous, smooth and creamy Mozzarella di Bufala. This mozzarella is made from the milk of water buffalo. THe water buffalo milk gives the mozzarella a slightly different flavor – a slight sour flavor. Luigi’s mozzarella di bufala is imported for him from Cilento, Italy, just south of Salerno (just south of Altavilla Silentina, as well, where part of Fork’s Cutlery were forged). Again, attention to detail and ingredients. We asked for more basil so each of us could have a little basil leaf with our mozzarella. This was one of those situations where Fork wished there was a hidden ziplock nearby to scoop up the mozzarella for a treat later. Note to self, stick ziplocks in your pockets!

Next came an Inslata Misto – mixed salad. A little rest before the next push forward. Fresh greens with a light dressing. Perfect at this point!

The ravioli changes everyday. With a small kitchen – and the space needed to make the amount of pasta needed daily – it would be impossible for them to make all the pasta there. The pasta for the ravioli is also made for Luigi in Brooklyn, but filled at Max. This ravioli – let me just say, my tines are swooning just thinking about this dish again – was heavenly. Ravioli di Porcini in Crema Tartufata. Mama Mia! Though the menu said ravioli this was shaped more like an agnolotti - half moon shaped. The pasta was filled with porcini mushrooms. You would think that would be enough. Nope not enough. The pasta was blanketed in a cream and truffle sauce.  Tiny pieces of truffle and cream. The aroma alone was heady. The flavor nearly beyond words. Bravo!

Just a note: One of the other diners didn’t like mushrooms, so ravioli with lobster was brought to the table as well.

Next up? Lasagna Fatta en Casa. House made lasagna. The pasta was perfectly cooked – slightly al dente. The beef inside added a lot of flavor to the lasagna, but was not overwhelming. The bechamel sauce rich and creamy, perfectly blending with the cheeses inside.  There’s a little hint of a spice throughout the lasagna – a spice we promised not to reveal – but it gives the dish a certain warmth that is unmistakable.

Loosen your belts. There’s still more!

Our next pasta dish was Fettuccine al Sugo Toscano.  Yummmmmmy. Al dente fettuccine – again, made for Max in Brooklyn. With a wonderful tomato based meat sauce. A little bit of cream. A lotta bit of flavor.

What I loved about each and every one of these dishes is the earthiness about them. I know there are some folk out there that will see this next statement the wrong way, but there is a wonderful peasant quality to them. These aren’t fancy schmancy dishes, but dishes that you would eat at your grandmother’s table or when visiting friends. I remember  driving through the country side in southern Italy with some of my Cutlery drawer and stopping at a small restaurant. There really was no menu to speak of, and not a lot of choices, but what was served was over the moon good. That is the feeling I instantly felt from Luigi and Max.

Before we get to the last dish in the pasta round, all of the canned tomatoes used in the sauces are imported from the Tuscany region of Italy. Luigi brought a gigunda (a little bigger than gigantic) can to the table and opened it for us to see. These were the freshest and brightest canned tomatoes I have ever tasted. The scent from the can and the brightness of the tomatoes was of a quality that you would never expect from a can of tomatoes. Again, a place where a hidden ziplock bag would have come in handy – though tomatoes would have been far more difficult to sneak into a ziplock and slip into a pocket!

Ok, the last of our pasta endeavor was Spaghetti Chitarra al Ragu d’Agnello. Okay, let’s start with the pasta. The pasta is a like spaghetti, but instead of being round, it’s square. The pasta is cut on a chitarra, which means guitar in Italian. The dough is pushed through the strings, making it square. Now the ragu. Again, fabulous tomato sauce base, this time with a ragu of ground lamb. You could smell and taste from the ragu that this had been cooked for a long time, allowing all the flavors to meld into a deep, rich, hearty ragu.

And again, here, one of the diners was vegetarian, so Luigi brought hergnocchi. And, of course, you can’ bring gnocchi to one person and not bring it to everyone, so we all sampled the gnocchi. Unlike the pasta, the gnocchi is made in-house. Light and fluffy, completely delicious!

Fork has never been a fan of Baccala.  I don’t quite get, catching a beautiful fish, drying it out in salt, and then putting it into some sort of liquid to reconstitute it. And besides, to Joe Stiff, a Baccala was always someone who was dopey! But this Filetto di Baccala al Forno was amazing. Beautifully pan seared baccala (cod fish) finished with a little truffle oil, served alongside the fluffiest, most delicious mashed potatoes this piece of cutlery has ever tried! Luigi, you have won me over on baccala, but only if I have it at Max!

 Our last main course dish was O’Polpettone ”E Mamma”. Polpettone is simply a rolled meatloaf. Inside this meatloaf was an egg, ham, mozzarella and parmigiano. For this dish, Luigi served us a regular portion that diners are served when they come to the restaurant for dinner. The polpettone is huge – like a nerf football in size. When you cut into the polpettone, the mozzarella just oozes out. The entire polpettonei s drenched in a deep rich marinara sauce. Now, my notes here say, that the regular mozzarella is made in-house. I may have been a bit tipsy from wine and food at this point, so forgive me if this is not right! Served alongside the polpettone – and almost the star of this dish was a gratin. A simple potato gratin, about 4 ” thick, studded throughout with pieces of pancetta. Oh, ziplock bag, why have you forsaken me!? 

So we have managed to get through all the antipasti, primi and secondi. Now, we’re off to the dolci.

First up, Tiramisu. Max serves their tiramisu in a sundae-type glass. This is a nice change from the usual squares of tiramisu that are usually plopped in front of you. The savoiardi still had texture and were not a mass of mush. The filling was light and airy. The alcohol was not over the top.

We also sampled their Panna Cotta. This was a delicious and decadent dense version of this dessert. It was wonderful. The panna cotta sat in a pool of golden caramel-ish goodness. It was more of a cross between a creme caramel, a flan and a panna cotta. The fresh slices of strawberry just drove it over the edge.

Our last dessert was Creme Brulee. Now, Luigi would like us to believe that this is an Italian dessert. I don’t think that went over to well with Spoon. But this was very good creme brulee. Perfect crack and crunch from the burnt sugar topping, revealing a creamy and rich custard beneath the shatter.

Sigh. We’re full just writing this! Luigi served the most wonderful Moscato d’Asti this Fork has ever had with dessert. La Caudrina. If you love Moscato d’Asti – as I do – buy this one!

Just to drive home our opening remarks – we absolutely loved Max, we love Luigi, we think you should go to this restaurant, over and over again, we know we will! Our opinions have absolutely nothing to do with our being invited to try this wonderful restaurant.

Max also has a location in Tribeca at 181 Duane Street. Try one of them, try them both, but please try them!

Max ~ 51 Avenue B ~ New York, New York ~ 212.539.0111

Becco ~ Birthday Celebration 5

Come on, admit it, you’re tired of hearing about my birthday. I am so grateful to my friends and family for making this birthday the most spectacular birthday I have ever had. As part of the celebration that is never ending, Spoon and Olive Fork bought tickets for the 3 of us to see a matinée of the Adams Family. The question then became, ‘Where to have lunch, where to have lunch?’ When the suggestion came out to try Becco, there were cheers, ooohs and aaaahs all around!

Becco has a wonderful prix fixe menu at both lunch and dinner aptly named the Sinfonia di Pasta. A choice of an appetizer, either Insalata Cesare or Antipasto Misto; bottomless pastas, there are 3 on the menu each day; and a fabulous dessert. The pasta is served table side and waiters rove the dining room with large pans full of pasta. You can eat as much or as little as you would like. The cost is $17.95 during lunch and $22.95 during dinner. A fantastic deal. A deal we had fully planned on trying.  Those of you who read our blog regularly, wave your hands if you think we took advantage of this great deal. I really can’t see any hands waving from here, so you all would be right. No such luck! But let me back up a bit first.

Olive Fork arrived first. Olive Fork. actually, was quite early. Would you believe, that during a ridiculously crowded lunch service (matinée day, right smack in the middle of the theatre district), they sat Olive Fork at our table to wait. We were quite pleased and impressed. Lesser restaurants are not that thoughtful, though they really should be. Really, isn’t it that type of service that has diners returning again and again?

Another surprise was the iced tea. Fresh, cold, large glasses and bottomless. Oh, all you restaurants that charge for iced tea by the glass, there’s a reason places like Becco are so successful, they understand treating their clientele well, and 22 cents worth of iced tea is certainly not a strain on anyone’s budget!

Our last surprise was our table. We had a teeny, tiny table, stuffed in between 2 large round tables that were chock full of people. Now, while we are not serving sized cutlery, we certainly are not children’s sized cutlery. This table was so ridiculous. The waiters were literally climbing over us to serve the two tables on either side.  This had disaster written all over it. A request to the wonderful host staff was all it took for us to be moved to another table. It wasn’t much bigger, but it was not as crowded.

Our waitress, Nicole, was lovely. Harried, yes, but lovely.

We didn’t make it through the menu to try the Sinfonia di Pasta. There were far too many glorious dishes on the menu to try. So we decided to split a few appetizers and a main course – which of course turned into 2 main courses! Our first choice for appetizer was a beautiful arugula salad with pears, gorgonzola and walnuts. Lightly dressed. There was a generous amount of pears and blue cheese and walnuts to go with our abundance of arugula. We loved the spiciness from the arugula with the sweet pears and savory blue cheese. Absolutely fantastic!

We had to try the Meatballs. Truly, if an Italian restaurant can’t master good meatballs, you know everything else is going to be terrible! These meatballs were great. They were gigantic -about spalding ball sized. The meatballs were fluffy and light, but still very rich in flavor. They seemed to be meatballs that were cooked in the sauce. It keeps them very tender being cooked that way. The sauce that the meatballs were swimming in was fresh and flavorful. And, of course, we couldn’t help but have a snowy cap of cheese grated over our meatballs!

The one thing we ordered that we had been drooling over on the menu online was the Polenta with Speck.  This is one of the small places we had a glitch. We ordered the polenta with the speck, but what arrived was just plain old polenta with nothing on top! Nicole whisked away the offensive polenta and brought the right dish. So many great things, one small dish, can it be possible? Look at that photo, it was possible. The creamiest polenta you can imagine topped with melted cheese just starting to brown and just when you think it can’t get better – crispy, crunchy speck! If there weren’t so much more to come, we could have just ordered this dish over and over and over and over!

As we were ordering we were craning our necks to watch all the dishes passing by to see if there was something we were missing. One of the things we saw walk past us was the lasagna. This was Lasagna alla Bolognese. This was lasagna that was fragrant and delicious and the cheesy just brown and gooey on top. This was also a gigantic serving of lasagna! Layers of pasta, bolognese sauce, bechamel and spinach. There was a wonderfully warm and earthy touch of cinnamon throughout the lasagna. The lasagna sat nestled between a pool of bechamel sauce on one side and marinara on the other. Definitely worth the food envy we suffered before ordering it!

The other dish that strolled past our table that we simply couldn’t resist was the Osso Bucco alla Becco. This is Becco’s signature dish of a slow braised veal shank. The shank is braised with tomatoes, carrots, celery until the meat is falling off the bone tender. Served on the side of the osso bucco was farrotto tossed with butternut squash. The farrotto was amazing. Farrotto is simply farro cooking the way risotto is cooked – get it? farro risotto, farrotto. Clever. Took me a while to get that too. The farrotto was very really very good. That could have been a dish all by itself.

We had so much osso bucco and lasagna left over, we absolutely had to take it with us.

For dessert – because you all know the Fork, Knife and Spoon motto, there’s always room for dessert – we ordered the special Panna Cotta of the day. Here was our second glitch. What arrived was plain old panna cotta wiggling on a plate. We all sadly looked at it. Nicole must have seen the bewildered look on our faces and looked at the dessert, picked up the plate and came back with the right dessert. Chocolate and vanilla panna cotta. Oh, yum! A layer of rich, chocolatey balanced by the more mellow vanilla panna cotta on top. The panna cotta was drizzled with chocolate. On the side was a scoop of raspberry sorbet. Tangy and sweet and perfect with the creaminess of the panna cotta. The perfect way to end a perfect meal.

One of the nice things about the Becco menu are the page numbers that go along with the dishes! You can find the recipes for most of the dishes on the menu in Lidia’s books so you can recreate your favorites at home.

This is a great place to go before a matinee or evening performance on Broadway. Heck, this is a great place to go any time at all!

The restaurant was beautifully decorated for Christmas. Yes, I said Christmas! Fork was very pleased to see Becco, an Italian restaurant, not being afraid to celebrate a holiday. I don’t think it’s you or I that has a problem with each person being able to celebrate their own holiday, or my being able to enjoy and appreciate your holiday as well as my own. I think it comes from all of these people who are hell bent on being ‘politically correct’. The problem with being so politically correct is that that is usually far more insulting than “Merry Christmas” or ‘Happy Chanukah’. I am taking back my holiday!  Buon Natale! Happy Chanukah! Let us all be safe and prosperous and happy and healthy and kind to each other in the New Year. Here’s to good friends, happy families, fantastic food and merriment!

Becco ~ 355 West 46th Street ~ New York, NY ~ 212.397.7597

Virgil’s BBQ ~ Birthday Celebration 4

Are you tired of my birthday yet? By this time, Fork needed sleep and an Alka Seltzer! But forge on we must!

As a birthday treat, Knife treated Fork to dinner and the theatre. We were both working, wanted a place for a quick bite and that was relatively close to the theatre. At the outset, I must tell you that Knife is a sucker for BBQ – which, I must say is surprising as Knife is allergic to tomatoes!

So when asked the question “Do you mind BBQ?” the answer was heck no, I don’t mind BBQ.

Virgil’s is one of those annoying places that does not let part of a reservation sit. Everyone must be present and accounted for before they let you sit. It isn’t as if there is anyplace for you to hang out and wait either. Your choice is the bar or the bathroom. 

The iced tea is bottomless, but the service was so slow we could not get a quick refill.

While Knife is a BBQ hound, Fork would go to the ends of the earth for Hush Puppies, so it was natural that our quick bite started with Hush Puppies with maple syrup butter. These were really strangely shaped! Fork is sued to little round spheres of hush puppy delight, but these seemed to be piped and cut into the oil. Nice and crisp and golden on the outside. The hush puppies themselves were full of flavor, lots of herbs flecked throughout, more dense than your usual hush puppy, but still addictively good.

Fork ordered the Kansas Fried Chicken. HUGE portion – well half of a very large chicken portion. You can 2 from the sides and you get a corn (SAHARA) bread muffin. Fork chose the Memphis Barbeque Beans and Cole Slaw.  The chicken was better than I had expected. Crispy, crunchy, slightly salty, flavorful outside, and still very juicy and tender inside.  The beans were smokey and tangy. I expected them to be mushy, but they weren’t. Pleasantly surprised at the flavor. The coleslaw was just generic. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either. Be VERY careful about the BBQ sauces on the table. After I tried one and burned my mouth to pieces, our dopey waitress came over and said ‘oh, no one came to explain the sauces to you?’ Hmmm, no, you didn’t. I suppose it isn’t HER job to explain anything, just to take the order and collect the tip. The bottles weren’t even labeled. So sauce user beware!

I did ask to substitute a biscuit for the corn bread. Nope. No can do. I can’t imagine it makes one bit of difference whether you have their yucky corn bread or biscuit, but nope, no can do. So I ordered a biscuit anyway. Seriously, what is BBQ without a biscuit. The biscuit was huge and so delicious. very crisp outer shell, and very tender and moist inside. The biscuit is served with more maple syrup butter. So much better than their dried out, sticky corn muffin.

Knife ordered the Memphis Pork Ribs. First, before we talk about the ribs, let’s talk about Virgil’s only serving Memphis style ribs (dry rub only, no sauce) and only pork ribs (not even a baby back to be found). Seems a little odd, doesn’t it? Glad you think so too! That being said, the ribs are terrific. Moist, tender, smokey, spicy, packed with flavor.  The meat falls off the bone. You can try the BBQ sauces on the table if you like your ribs saucy – but try very little first or you will be unable to speak for hours! Knife ordered the pickled beets and coleslaw to go with. The beets were very good. They said they were house cured. Fork isn’t sure she’d bet the farm on that one!

Now for the REALLY annoying part. Our service was SO slow we didn’t have time for dessert. We barely had time to get to the theatre! If you are going pre-theatre, leave yourself PLENTY of time!

Virgil’s Real BBQ ~ 152 West 44th Street ~ NYC, NY ~ 212.921.9494