Bubby’s

Fork & Spoon needed a restaurant close enough to an event we were attending to not involve a lot of walking in the rain. Our biggest dilemma always seems to be what to eat. Neither of us ever wants to decide. You pick, no you pick, no you pick. Whining ensues. Not a pretty sound. A zip code and google helps in these situations.  Hmmmm …… southern, BBQ, fried chicken? Oh, Bubby’s, you have won our hearts! The online menu looked great. And Bubby’s is renowned for their pies and desserts.

They have many different menus. There is a breakfast menu, a lunch menu, a brunch menu (they are famous for their brunch menu), a midnight brunch menu, an afternoon menu, and a dinner menu. Our timing was going to be a little off, so the afternoon menu, which is served from 4pm to 6pm and from 11pm to midnight would be perfect. One glitch, the menu online and the afternoon menu didn’t match, so the dishes we wanted to try from the online menu weren’t available at the time we were there. It was 5:30. Would Bubby’s let us wait?

Fork was early. Spoon was running late. Would they even let Fork sit and wait? Well, yes, of course, you can sit and wait. Iced tea, menus, a discussion with Dominick – our wonderful waiter – about the menus. Yes, we had to wait for 6pm for the dinner menu, but we were welcome to wait. Iced tea was in huge glasses, fresh and most importantly bottomless.

Once Spoon arrived, and more iced tea ordered, we went to work on the menu.  Dominick listened to what we were thinking of ordering, and knew what was on both the afternoon and dinner menu so we could begin ordering. Dominick, you are the best! What a great waiter, interested in the customer, knowledgable about the menu, and attentive.

Our first choice was on both the afternoon menu and the dinner menu, so that was easy. Warm Hand Cut Potato Chips with Maytag Blue Cheese. There isn’t a single word in that title that doesn’t make you drool and isn’t decadent and amazing. The chips are amazing. Thick cut potato chips with just the right amount of crispy and chewy. The chips are city in a pool of melty blue cheesey goodness with large chunks of Maytag blue cheese swimming around. There is  just a bit of the sauce and cheese drizzled on top of the chips. It kept the chips from becoming too soggy and icky. This dish of fabulousness gave us time to get close enough to 6:00pm to put in our dinner order.

We had originally intended on ordering the BBQ Pork Sliders. They’re on the dinner online menu, but they were not on the restaurant dinner menu! After a bit of a discussion – and trying to overcome our severe disappointment – and with Dominick’s help - about what we were planning on ordering, he came up with a simple solution: The Red Wattle Pulled Pork Plate. This let us try the 2 sides we were going to order as appetizers and have BBQ pork at the same time. Sheer genius!

What arrives is this gigantic platter of goodness. Fork and Spoon are never quite sure that the white bread is about. But, white bread aside, on our fabulous platter was BBQ pulled pork, hush puppies, mac & cheese, pickles and cole slaw. The pickles are crispy and tangy and sweet. The cole slaw? Take a page from the Daily News, soak it, shred it, put it in a ramekin, voila, cole slaw. It was just plain awful. The crusty mac & cheese was really yummy. The crust was – well, as the name implies, crusty! There was a wonderful smokiness about the dish. Very cheesy, pasta not mushy. The hush puppies were so good! Free form in shape, flecks of herbs throughout, great flavor, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. The pork was totally the star. It’s seasoned really well, but dry rubbed, not in sauce. Don’t th ink for a minute this means it was dry! Not by any stretch of the imagination. The pork was tender and falling about and very moist. There was a terrific vinegary tang to it.  On each table is a trio of sauces that are made in-house at Bubby’s. One is vinegar based, one is spicy tangy and one is mustard based. The spicy and mustard were our favorites. These sauces were good on everything!

One of the sides that we had to try, but couldn’t include in our platter was Cauliflower James Beard Style. Lightly sautéed, herbs, breadcrumbs. Needed a little salt. We needed a vegetable! And this totally fit the bill. Mostly healthy, very good.

As we were sitting and happily sipping iced tea and munching away on our s, Spoon spied Dominick bringing a biscuit to a table behind us. Tines spun around so quickly to see the biscuit it’s a wonder we weren’t permanently damaged. Spoon called over our dear Dominick and merely pointed. He winked, turned and when he reappeared he had 2 of the most beautiful biscuits we had ever seen. They were so tall and golden – popover sized. You could see how flakey they were just by looking at them. They were piping hot. When you broke them open the insides were tender, just beckoning for butter! The outside was crispy with a slight saltiness to it. Dominick told us there was a new gal as the pastry chef and she had just made the biscuits. We would have run into the kitchen and kissed her had we been allowed!

And of course dessert. It can’t be a true adventure without dessert. We were still reeling from the deliciousness of the biscuit and wanted to try and blankly staring at the spinning dessert display. Every single pie and cupcake and cookie looked amazing. We couldn’t decide. We looked to Dominick and he simply said ‘Sour Cherry’. SOLD! Michigan sour cherries tucked into a flaky and crisp crust. Not too sour, not too sweet, just enough of both elements to satisfy your palate. A little whipped cream on the side and Bob’s your uncle.

I wish I could remember the pastry chef’s name. I know she was knew when we were there for dinner, I am pretty sure her name began with a K, maybe Spoon will remember. If you see this – YOU ROCK!

If you’re jonesing for good BBQ, Bubby’s will satisfy you! While we ate in Tribeca, there’s also a location in Brooklyn.

Bubby’s ~ 120 Hudson Street ~ New York, New York ~ 212.219.0666
Bubby’s ~ 1 Main Street ~ DUMBO ~ Brooklyn, NY ~ 718.222.0666

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

Barbuto ~ Birthday Celebration 2

Celebration Number Two – Spoon, Knork, Spork, Olive Fork, Olive Spoon, and Cake Fork were gathered with Fork for Birthday Celebration 2 at Barbuto. Barbuto is owned by the colorful and talented chef, Jonathan Waxman, author of A Great American Cook and the soon to be published Italian My Way.

Again, pardon the pictures. Far too much celebrating to have been paying attention! They looked great at the time! Perhaps it was the Cosmopolitans!

Barbuto is located in at the south end of the meatpacking district in a converted warehouse and garage. The space is definitely what you would call industrial chic.  In the warmer months the garage doors are rolled up for outside dining and better people watching.

It’s loud and vivacious. It’s funky and chic. It’s welcoming and fun. There is a private dining room and a chef’s table in the kitchen for parties of 8 or more. Seems like a lot of fun, maybe next time!

There were so many people and so many choices! The menu is local and changed almost daily depending on what is fresh and available.

For starters both Fork and Spoon ordered the Polenta with Wild Mushrooms. We were going to share but then we started eying each other in that mischievous I don’t want to share way and ended up ordering 2 portions. And what a good decision that was! The polenta was soft and creamy, the mushrooms were just delectable. They had earthiness and a meatiness and a certain wonderful tang. This was the perfect beginning to a fabulous meal.

Knork had soup. Knork doesn’t share. But Spoon ignores this irksome habit and just eats right off Knork’s plate with a smile. Knork wasn’t sitting close enough to me to see what kind of soup was had, his tines are little bent and he can’t remember much! We know it was a vegetable soup. We know he was quiet for quite some time so he must have enjoyed it immensely!

Spork on the other hand loves to share. Spork loves to share because Spork wants everyone to share in return! Spork shares so much one of the crostini were missing before I could take a photo. Spork ordered the crostini  of the day, which on this day was with pureed butternut squash. A sprinkling of grated cheese and a drizzle of balsamic made this the perfect few bites to start off.

Olive Fork and Olive Spoon shared an appetizer of beets, black forbidden rice, frisee and grated dry goat cheese. This was really yummy. The forbidden rice had a nice texture, slighty crispy, slightly chewy. The beets were tiny and nicely roasted. The dressing was light and unobtrusive. Really refreshing and delicious.

If you want bread, you have to ask for it. A little strange. Then again, the iced tea, while very good, was not bottomless. Fork and Spoon will never understand how $1 (maybe) of iced tea can cost a diner $12.00!

Now, the main course is so much easier. Fork, Spoon and Olive Fork had the infamous Pollo al Forno - roasted JW chicken with salsa verde. Yes, we’ve all had roasted chicken before, but I guarantee you have never had roasted chicken like this! Crispy, salty skin, moist tender 1/2 chicken that you are more than happy to take home what you cannot finish. THe salsa verde was a nice compliment to the chicken. The chicken is roasted in one of the brick ovens to absolute perfection. Again, we could have shared, but friendships would have ended over the sharing! This chicken alone is reason enough to eat at Barbuto!

Spork had Lumachine - a shape almost like a shell, almost like an elbow, but not quite. The Lumachine was served with a fantastic sauce of roasted cauliflower and cream. Rich, creamy and delicate all at the same time.

Guess what Knork ordered? Steak. How’s that for a surprise. We go to a place with a signature dish and Knork will have anything but that dish.  The hanger steak was beautiful. Perfectly cooked. Perfectly seasoned. Nice sized steak. The steak was served with grilled radicchio. Imagine the bitterness of radicchio with a smokey char. Delish!

Olive Spoon ordered the Lamb Loin. The lamb was served over a rutabega puree. It wasn’t earth shattering, but it was good. Quite frankly, everything was over the moon good!

Potatoes. We need to seriously discuss the potatoes. The name should be changed to Crack Potatoes. Totally amazing. So amazing in fact, that while eating them and fighting over the plate, we ordered more. Fortunately for me, Spoon is generous soul and let me have what was left on the first plate – while ordering the second, mind you – because it was my birthday. The Patate are first boiled, then smashed a bit and then deep fried. Oh, no, that isn’t all, they are sprinkled with salt and pepper and grated pecorino cheese and rosemary. They are totally amazing.

We also had a side of wilted greens with garlic and chilis and roasted brussel sprouts with hazelnuts and colatura. Colatura, or garum colatura, is an ancient Italian condiment – for lack of a better word. It’s made from fermenting fatty fish like anchovies or sardines. The fish is layered in with herbs and salt and left to ferment. The end result is a golden liquid used to give an oh so subtle je ne sais quoi to the brussel sprouts. Fork is not a fan of the brussel sprout, but these were pretty good.  The wilted greens were just sautéed quickly so they were still bright and green and still had a texture to them, lotsa garlic and a nice hint of chilis.

(apparently, Cake Fork is under the impression that I have to taste EVERYTHING in order to write about it. Does Cake Fork not understand WHY I eat with other people!)

The Bomba. Now doesn’t that look like the perfect cake for a birthday Fork to enjoy! And, again, thank you dear Cutlery for not singing! Dense, fabulous chocolate cake sandwiched a wonderful cherry semifreddo. Pistachios, cherries, whipped cream and a candle. I could gush and gush and gush about this dessert, but words simply cannot describe this! I was seriously hard pressed to share this, but Spork gave me that puppy look and there went a spoonful! We won’t even discuss the quick spooned Spoon!

Spoon had the Apple Crostata. Spoon will have an apple anything! Wonderful flakey crust coupled with tender caramel-y apples. Always being one to gild the lily, Spoon asked to swap out the vanilla ice cream for maple ice cream. Really good dessert. Really good ice cream.

Pumpkin Bread Pudding. This was our least favorite dessert. Though I am not a big pumpkin fan, Olive Fork is a big pumpkin fan. The comment from the Olive Fork was that it was too light in flavor and too dry. Personally, this Fork thinks pumpkin is for the birds! 

Both Knork and Spork had Affogato. They too opted to switch out the vanilla ice cream for maple. Affogato quite literally means drowned. A scoop of ice cream with a shot of espresso poured over the top. Heaven in a cup!

I, for one, Chef Waxman, am happy that you put down the trombone and picked up a chef’s knife!

Thanks you Spoon and Knork and Spork and Olive Spoon and Olive Fork and Cake Fork for sharing my birthday with me! It was the perfect celebration!

Barbuto ~ 775 Washington Street ~ NYC, NY ~ 212.924.9700