As a blogger, I get invited to a lot of cool events. My most recent event was dinner at the NoMad rooftop hosted by Buick. With this being m...
The burger game in New York City is a saturated one. Every week another burger joint opens with their dicks swinging, claiming that their g...
The burger game in New York City is a saturated one. Every week another burger joint opens with their dicks swinging, claiming that their grass fed burgers are the best in town. Six months later they close down and another burger joint or a fucking fro-yo shop opens in their place. So when picking a burger joint, I tend to do my homework and chose wisely, or I will end up at shit holes like Corner Burger. I do in fact make a pretty mean burger myself, and for me to travel from one end of Brooklyn to the other end of Brooklyn to get a burger, it better be fucking good.
I have this ongoing list burger joints that I need to visit, not a bucket list, those are for assholes. This time I wound up at Dumont Burger in Williamsburg. After spending a week of rummaging the internet and when I mean by internet, I mean stalking hash tags on Instagram for pictures of what I was getting myself into. This is a great method, it's like online dating, except there is only a 50% chance of you having to call the cops. Dumont's menu is small, this is what I had:
DuMont Burger ($14): Grass fed beef laid onto a grilled Brioche bun, Boston bibb lettuce, tomato, red onion, house pickles, and your choice of onion rings or french fries. Dumont only offers one type of burger, with your choice of cheeses, bacon, caramelized onions, etc. I had my burger with bacon and cheddar cheese. Not many burgers can rival my all time favorite burger at Ox Cart, and Dumont's burger is a very close competitor. The patty was perfectly seasoned with no need for ketchup or any other condiment, and cooked to a perfect medium rare. If I had to explain Dumont's house made pickles, out-fucking-rageuos, ask for extras!
Besides word of mouth, another way I pick restaurants to write about is through my Twitter feed. Dumont once followed me, but unfollowed me sometime ago. I pretty much wrote them off, well, because I am a 5 year old boy trapped in a 32 year old man's body. Good food is good food, Twitter or not. Dumont Burger is just good food and with only 2 months left in the year, I have to say Dumont Burger maybe the best burger I've had for 2013.
DuMont Burger
314 Bedford Ave Brooklyn, NY 11211
www.DumontBurger.com
Sometimes you have a better shot of finding a cab at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, on a rainy day, in Manhattan than finding a good old sc...
Sometimes you have a better shot of finding a cab at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, on a rainy day, in Manhattan than finding a good old school Italian red sauce restaurant in the city. Yeah, little Italy is flooded with old school spots, but over the past 20 years the quality of the food has become so bad that only a tourist with a fanny pack in tote can appreciate. Besides, I'm from Brooklyn, so there is a better chance of me joining Yelp than stepping foot into any of those places. There's also places like Carbone, where you have to wait weeks for a reservation or you end up eating dinner at 11:30pm on a Tuesday night at a small cramped table located near the bathroom. Then there are places like Galli in Soho. Galli is a little bit off the radar, but with food good enough to roll with the heavy hitters of the red sauce game.
Nestled on Mercer, between Grand and Broome street, Galli is adorned with huge sign that says "Restaurant." As we swung open two huge glass doors, we were greeted by a hostess who took us past a long white marble top bar, and past large leather booths to our seats in the back of the restaurant. Two menus were placed on our table along with thinly sliced Italian bread and a dish filled with olive oil and balsamic - official. The menu was simple, just straight up red sauce dishes. This is what we ordered:
Gamberi ($17) Rigatoni,
broccoli, fresh mozzarella and shrimp served up in a creamy pink
sauce. The Crunchy brocoli and perfectly cooked shrimp made me shovel
every inch of this dish into my mouth. I've had this plenty of times in
other restaurants and only a handful have nailed it, add Galli to that
list.
Fried Calamari ($13) Your standard fried calamari with a few plump fried shrimp thrown into the mix, served with a chipotle mayo and Galli's house tomato sauce. Tender in texture, but a little bland. A few spoonfuls of the house red sauce and everything started to make sense. I left the chipotle mayo sauce on the side because my Brooklyn card would be revoked if anyone found out I was dipping calamari into chipotle mayo.
Chicken Parm ($17) A thin cutlet, breaded and fried, topped with Galli's house red sauce and served with a side of penne in sauce. I knew I was about to eat something good when I saw the burn spots on the cheese. It amazes me how many places can fuck up a simple dish like this but Galli got it right. Thin, crispy and a portion big enough to feed a small group of newly fired model. Galli's house sauce had me reaching for more bread to soak up all the red sauce goodness.
Red sauce spots are a dime a dozen in Manhattan, but finding a good one is nearly impossible. Either they're over-hyped, or some assbag from Ohio who grew up eating Totino's pizza rolls tries to reinvent the wheel. Galli just gets it right - bringing the old school into the new school without fucking it up.
Galli
45 Mercer St, New York, NY
(212) 966-9288
The summer wind came blowing in and with a blink of an eye the summer wind blew right out, But not without one last day of indulgence in hog...
Lunchtime for me is always limited. Sometimes I don't even have lunch because I am so busy running around Manhattan. I recently found m...
Lunchtime for me is always limited. Sometimes I don't even have lunch because I am so busy running around Manhattan. I recently found myself working in the Financial District with time to spare, and I wanted something really good for lunch. I remembered that nearby there's a GO Burger kiosk serving up burgers and fries. I always wanted to try their truck, but never had the chance. I figured - what do I have to lose?
Located behind the W Hotel on Washington Street was small box with a window, an exhaust hanging out of it's roof, and a GO! Burger logo plastered all over it - this must be the place! A quick peek at the menu and this what I got :
BLT ($7.50): Double Smoked Bacon, American Cheese, Lettuce, Tomato, Red Onion, Pickles, GO Burger Sauce. First of all, my burger was cooked well-done. I should have went back and thrown it at them. You know who eats a well done burgers? Assholes. Secondly, my burger looked like someone sat on it. This maybe the shittiest tasting burger I've had in a while and If I wanted a shitty burger I would have went to up the block to Burger King.
Skinny Fries ($4): As I waited for my order, I noticed money grip removing two brown bags from a freezer - one of which held the "skinny fries." Precious was skinnier than these fries. Heavy, starchy and loaded with salt. How the fuck do you call yourself a burger spot when you serve frozen shit?
Vidalia Onion Rings ($5): That second bag I told you about held these grease traps they called onion rings. Greasy and full of salt, I had to throw away half of them.
They should rename this place "You should GO! Somewhere else burger." What a shit hole! It's no wonder that the only people I saw buying food from them were tourists - and not just regular tourists. These were the ones that still use paper maps and stuff the extra napkins into their fanny packs.
Go Burger
123 Washington Street NY 10006 (other locations)
I would say that 75% of the time I find a new restaurant, it's through word of mouth. When I say word of mouth I don't mean the fuck...
I would say that 75% of the time I find a new restaurant, it's through word of mouth. When I say word of mouth I don't mean the fucksticks on Yelp. It's always a recommendation I get from someone I respect in the food game. Once in a while I will take a recommendation from a girl I am dating, just to see if they're wifey material (and probably because I haven't hit the poom-poom yet.) My latest had recommended a place called "Flex Mussels"
Anyone who knows me knows that I hate gimmicky restaurants with gimmicky names, and unless I'm missing something "Flex Mussels" is as gimmicky as it gets. The things I do for a pretty face. My date and I headed to their Chelsea location, right off of 6th avenue. I noticed and hoped for outside seating but was whisked past a bar / oyster shucking station to a cramped corner in the back of the restaurant.
A quick skim of the menu and this is what we ordered :
The Mexican ($21.50) Chipotle, adobo,
chorizo, calamari. This Mexican should be deported. The chorizo wasn't
spicy, the calamari was tasteless and rubbery, the broth tasted like
this was the pot in which the homeless guy washed his socks and soiled
underwear.
Thai mussel ($21.50) Curry, coconut broth, lemongrass, kaffir lime, coriander, lime, ginger, garlic. When I imagine a bowl of mussels , I see a big heaping pot filled to the top with all kinds of fresh herbs, etc. What I got was a large bowl which looked liked a homeless man just finished shitting into was placed in front of me with barely any mussels, don't let the picture fool you. As I shook my head at this sorry poor presentation, I began to think as to why can't I smell any curry? Oh that's right, because my broth was watered down and had barely any taste.
Truffle Fries ($11) Pre-cut french fries that turned soggy within about 8 seconds of hitting our table. There was enough salt on these fries to start another ocean on another planet. They should have paid me $11 for eating this soggy dogshit
Donuts ($10) A donut with your choice of filling, we went with caramel and a peanut butter and jelly donut. The donut was pretty good, light and tasty but the peanut-butter tasted like it was Key Food brand.
I have to say, my experience at Flex Mussels was awful. Not only was the food bad but the service was horrible. My date and I watched as two other tables were seated about 15 minutes after us, and got their food before us. No complimentary drinks, nothing taken off the tab, not even apology. Another thing about this place is the way they plate their food. I got a pound of mussels in a 5 quart pot. I felt like I was scraping the bottom of someone else's dinner. A bag of mussels costs what? $4-$5 a bag? When I'm paying a premium for my dinner, I expect everything to be top notch. I usually like to get kissed before I get fucked.
Flex Mussels
154 W 13th St New York
(212) 229-0222
flexmusselsny.com
There ain't shit you can tell me about Americanized Italian food. I grew up close to Bensonhurst, a southern region in Brooklyn (south o...
There ain't shit you can tell me about Americanized Italian food. I grew up close to Bensonhurst, a southern region in Brooklyn (south of Bay Ridge, get a compass asshole) which was home to the largest population of Italians in the borough. A lot of my friends were Italian, and since Italian food is way better than Russian food, I took every chance I had to eat at their houses so I could escape the endless bowls of borscht, dark black breads, and all pickled everything. Chicken parm, baked ziti, stuffed shells, steak pizzaiola, this is all shit I know well. Straight up, 100%, Americanized Italian food. I'm so official I pronounce capicola as "gabagool." So when I heard about a sandwich spot called Parm which was ran by the kings of the new school of Italian/American cooking, Rich Torissi and Mario Carbone, I needed to check it out.
Parm is located in Little Italy on Mulberry Street right next to Torrisi, which is known for being a celebrity hangout with great food. I was praying that Amanda Bynes would walk out as I was walking into parm... she's my spirit animal. No such luck, and as I walked into Parm I was greeted by a drunk frat dude sipping his loneliness away at the bar - you know the type, pushing 32 and still rocking his class ring. As we walked past that fuck stick, we were greeted by a host and sat at table that looked like it was a 50's dinner. Didn't need to skim the menu, this is what we got:
Meatball Parm ($12): Served on a
toasted seeded sweet semolina bread, laid a meatball mix with beef,
sausage, and veal topped with a mellow tangy tomato sauce, a thin layer
of fresh, creamy, salty mozzarella and a leaf of basil. If a porn star
had a baby with a bag of money, these meatballs are what would come of
it. Hands down, the best meatball parm in Manhattan.
Mozzarella Sticks ($10): Why the fuck are you looking at me like that? It's fried motherfucking cheese, of course I ordered it. These weren't those Key Food mozzarella sticks your mom warmed up in the oven instead of deep frying them like someone with citizenship. The cheese was gooey and salty with a crispy fresh coating of bread crumbs, hints of parsley and parmigiana cheese.
Chicken Parm ($12): Toasted, seeded, sweet semolina bread, thinly cut fried chicken, topped with sauce, fresh mozzarella and a basil leaf. Good, crunchy, juicy. But not better than the meatball parm.
Parm definitely delivered on all of the hype and more. I won't lie, I was a little bit skeptical when I heard that Torissi and Carbone's new spot "Carbone" was charging $48 for shrimp scampi. Like, come on, how good can it be? But now, Parm made me a believer and I'm ready to fork over $48 for a dish that usually costs $24.
Parm
248 Mulberry St Manhattan, NY 10012
(212)993-7189
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