{"id":10475,"date":"2024-11-13T08:06:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T13:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10475"},"modified":"2024-11-12T20:07:19","modified_gmt":"2024-11-13T01:07:19","slug":"nyc-eats-november-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/13\/nyc-eats-november-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC eats, November 2024."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My work trip to New York didn\u2019t quite go as planned<\/a>, but I did eat well. My first stop was at San Matteo<\/a>, a pizzeria on the Upper East Side that I found because my mom emailed me this Italian list of the best pizzerias in the U.S.<\/a> (with other lists for other regions\/countries plus a global one). I don\u2019t agree with a lot of the list \u2013 excluding Pizzeria Bianco yet including Pizzeria Pomo is inexplicable \u2013 but I\u2019ve been to 15 and all of them are at least a 55. I\u2019ve got my work cut out for me, though. Anyway, San Matteo looks completely ordinary, like your typical New York Italian-American restaurant, with a massive menu that only gets to pizza on the last page. I got the porcini tartufo pizza, a white pie with fresh mozzarella, porcini mushrooms, Parmiggiano Reggiano, and truffle oil, as none of the red pies was especially grabbing me, although it didn\u2019t matter \u2013 the star of this show is the dough, one of the lightest I have ever tasted on any pizza of any style. It is Neapolitan, recognizably so at the edges and with a damp center, but this dough was as airy as a meringue. It\u2019s not that it has giant air bubbles; the whole texture is pillowy soft, yet doesn\u2019t lose the slight tang you get from long fermentation. The porcinis were excellent \u2013 I\u2019m glad they used those rather than cremini, as porcini have a \u2018meatier\u2019 flavor thanks to their high concentration of glutamates \u2013 and while truffle oil is generally a big meh for me, it was definitely good quality olive oil. They also make a very solid Negroni, still among my absolute favorite cocktails. (I\u2019m becoming a Manhattan guy, though. I think it\u2019s age.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So by sheer coincidence, my sister, who lives in northern Virginia, was also in Manhattan for a meetup with some friends, and she texted me the pin of her hotel \u2026 which was at the same intersection as mine. There are over 100 hotels in Manhattan, and we happened to end up at two hotels located at literally the same pair of cross streets. Anyway, we had a lovely lunch on Saturday at Aragvi<\/a>, a Georgian restaurant, by which I mean the country in the Caucasus, not the American state, although both seem to have a desire to roll back civil rights. Aragvi\u2019s menu comprises traditional Georgian classics, and I think we ended up with three of the big ones, acknowledging that I\u2019d never had Georgian food before and actually did a little reading before we went so I might know what we were eating. We started with a plain cheese khachapuri \u2013 extremely similar to the Turkish dish peinirli if you\u2019ve had that \u2013 which is a baked bread bowl that had three cheeses melted in the center along with an egg yolk and a small knob of butter. I only knew one of the cheeses, feta, but the combination reminded me of a mixture of mozzarella and ricotta salata, and I think it\u2019s an enriched dough given the texture and outside color. I\u2019d eat this every day if it wouldn\u2019t kill me. We also got a plate of cheese khinkali<\/em>, which are Georgian dumplings akin to pierogis, shaped like giant xiao long bao<\/em> \u2013 sorry, I\u2019m not even sure what to italicize any more \u2013 with what I can only describe as ricotta inside. They were fantastic but absolutely enormous and our best efforts only got us through three of them. The final dish was chicken mtsvadi<\/em>, and you\u2019re god-damned right I copied and pasted that word from their website, grilled chicken thighs with the texture of smoked meat, served with pickled cabbage and fresh onions and parsley on one bit of lavash bread and a red sauce of unknown origin. (I think it was adjika<\/em>, although it was a 0 on the spice scale.) This was a welcome change from all of the cheese we\u2019d been eating, although I wish they\u2019d brought more lavash or other bread to make eating the meat with the toppings easier. All told, though, I am now a fan of Georgian cuisine. They do also have a list of Georgian wines, and I got a white that, like Michael Scott, I couldn\u2019t name for you. It was medium-bodied and kind of crisp, better than the full-bodied one the server had me try that had an overwhelming green apple flavor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving along rapidly \u2026 Saturday dinner with a grad school classmate (wu-hoo!) came at Abbey Tavern<\/a>, which is his favorite spot in Manhattan, and they do Guinness properly \u2013 it wasn\u2019t too cold, so I could really taste the beer. Guinness is one of the only mass-market beers I would actively choose to drink, because I think it tastes good \u2013 it is more than an alcohol delivery device. And it goes well with fish and chips, which was my order, and which was also really solid, with my only real complaints being that 1) it was way too much food and 2) they didn\u2019t bring malt vinegar, although to be fair I didn\u2019t ask because we were busy talking. I hadn\u2019t seen this friend since our 20th<\/sup> reunion back in 2019, and I missed the 25th<\/sup> because it was the weekend of my daughter\u2019s prom, and while I was super bummed to miss the reunion I made the right choice. Back to the food, I demolished the fries, and ate two of three very generous fillets of cod, super crisp and well seasoned, as well as extremely hot when they hit the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunday morning was the day of the one game I went to, so I loaded up by walking the 15 minutes to Tal\u2019s Bagels<\/a> on the east side, which was on my employer\u2019s recent list of the best bagels in the city<\/a>, of which I had been to exactly none. (Zucker\u2019s was my favorite to this point, and might still be.) I figured I likely wouldn\u2019t get lunch at the ballpark, so I went all out with an egg, bacon, and hash brown sandwich (no cheese) on an everything bagel. You probably only care about the bagel, and the truth is it was fuckin\u2019 awesome. I would eat that bagel every day. This is why I love New York \u2013 you eat stuff there that makes you think the rest of your life is being frittered away on subpar food. I don\u2019t know if this is the best bagel in New York or Manhattan or in Midtown, but I know it satisfied my innate need for a real New York bagel. Also, not to get too far afield here, but I generally don\u2019t \u2018combine\u2019 starches \u2013 potatoes on pizza is almost as much of an abomination to me as pineapple is \u2013 yet this one absolutely worked. The crispy hash browns offered a textural contrast to the soft interior of the bagel. Win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My last meal before leaving the city came at Empanada Mama<\/a> on the west side, and the company was Joe Sheehan, whom I\u2019ve known for twenty-plus years but hadn\u2019t seen since before the pandemic. Joe mentioned this is a longtime favorite of his, and as you may have figured out from reading me for years or just from reading this one post, I will eat almost anything if it is somehow wrapped in dough. I tried three different varieties and my favorite was the Bombay, a wheat-flour empanada filled with curried chicken and chickpeas. The curry flavor was light, clearly there but more of a supporting player, and the chicken and beans were balanced too, which is what I wanted since I also got the very meaty Reggaeton (filled with pernil<\/em>, a form of roast pork). The corn flour-based rice-and-beans missed the mark a little because of the crust \u2013 the filling was fine but the texture of the crust was off for me. I was also pretty full before I even started that one, so keep that in mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For coffee, I went to two longtime favorites, Culture Espresso and Blue Bottle, the latter because I think their espresso is still a pinnacle of the form, with an inherent sweetness to their beans that few others can match. (Archetype in Omaha has hit that mark too.) I was a little disappointed at Culture, where the barista spooned foam into my espresso macchiato rather than pouring it \u2013 I know that\u2019s almost a religious debate at this point, but I think you always<\/em> want pourable foam. I\u2019ve only seen the spooned foam as standard when I was in England and Wales in 2022, but to me a macchiato means poured foam. I suppose that\u2019s more preference than anything else. Blue Bottle nailed it, of course. I\u2019ve truly never had a bad shot at any of their locations in any city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My work trip to New York didn\u2019t quite go as planned, but I did eat well. My first stop was at San Matteo, a pizzeria on the Upper East Side that I found because my mom emailed me this Italian list of the best pizzerias in the U.S. (with other lists for other regions\/countries plus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1238,84,1425,568,223,240],"class_list":["post-10475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bagels","tag-coffee","tag-georgian-cuisine","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-pizza","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10476,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10475\/revisions\/10476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}