food of nyc (oct-nov-dec)

There’s this app called Beli that a lot of New Yorkers have. It’s a food rating app where you can log all the restaurants and rank their relative placements (whether or not you liked place A over place B); the app then assigns a rating number based on the number rating of the relative choices you made. In general, I think it’s a pretty good way of getting people to stay consistent with ranking restaurants because I feel like it takes a lot more effort to think of a number than to decide qualitatively if one place was better than another and turns the process into a small mini-game. I am, however, notoriously bad at logging every place I go to into the app, which leads me to forget about some places that I genuinely want to keep track of (especially when people ask me for recommendations). The solution perhaps lies in just writing about them here, so here are a few notable places I’ve been to over the past couple months.

• l’artusi: For some reason, I had heard somewhere that this place was very overated and had that sense walking into the restaurant as well. I am (and Anouska for that matter), however, a sucker for both ricotta and buratta and our first app (which was a burrata crostone with fig and some other accoutrements) completely swayed me away from my preconceived notions about the place. There’s something about these middle to high upscale italian restaurants that deeply resonates with me; I feel like they really capture what I consider is the essence of italian cuisine, simple high-quality ingredients with very precise and intentional preparation. I’m not remembering every dish that we got from here but another famous dish of theirs that is a must have is their cacio e pepe. I eventually did rate this on my Beli and it’s pretty high up there.

• Lucali: After months of thinking that I was going to go here, I finally made it and it is worth the hype by far. To be blatantly honest, I’ve seen pictures of the pizza before and didn’t think all too much about it, but both seeing it in person and tasting it is a completely different world. I’ve never had a New York style slice with this texture and it stands far above everybody else when it comes to this: the dough is unbelievably light while also maintaining incredible crisp. They are very particular with toppings and only offer a small list of eight-ish or so toppings. My favorite combo was surprisingly mushrooms and sweet pepper as opposed to the shallots and garlic. I still need to go another time to try the other items on their menu, the calzone and the rotating pasta that they change up but Lucali definitely makes it hard to choose my favorite pizza place between itself and L’Industrie Pizzeria (all these l’ places have something going on). At the end of the day it’s a battle between texture and flavor. All I can say definitely is that a pizza place with the texture of Lucali and the flavor creativity of L’Industrie would rule the world of New York Style slices. The next pizza place I have in my sights is Una Pizza Napoletana.

• Oxomoco: I’ve always felt like I’ve been to a michelin star restaurant in NYC, but other than a pastry popup from Eleven Madision Park, I cannot remember having been to another before Oxocomo. If that’s the case then Oxomoco is officially the first michelin star restaurant that I’ve been to (it has one star). It wasn’t mind blowing by any means but it was damn good food. We actually got two appetizers for free (due to some small hair in the tortilla chip), the guac n’ chips and the salsa n’ chips, both of which have given me some inspiration for when making my own guac and salsa. The main star of the show that I hard heard about were the tacos. I don’t think the brunch menu has all their tacos but I thoroughly enjoyed the ones I tried: the beet taco and the lamb barbacoa taco. I could speak a lot more about both in detail but the main idea takeaway is that Oxomoco does very well at finding a theme for each of their tacos and designing a well-rounded taste/presentation experience around them.

• Hyderabadi Zaiqa: You wouldn’t expect it but Hyderbadi Zaiqa actually shows up on a decent number of “best in nyc” lists. I actually wasn’t the most hungry and in a eating state of mind when I came here so I don’t think our group ordered as optimally as we could have. I want to go again and make sure I’m treating this place the same as all the others, but out of what I did have, it was pretty decent.

• Radio Bakery: It feels like ages since I’ve first visited Radio Bakery so I’m surprised that I haven’t talked about it yet. It may be the best bakery I have been to in NYC (with Dominique Ansel and Little Flower Cafe being a close contenders below) and it’s where I’ve had my favorite Pain au Chocolate (this is something that I try at each bakery that I go to if they have it). They don’t skimp on the chocolate at all on this croissant, it’s like a solid block of goodness surrounded by a perfect croissant, truly divine. They are also pretty popular for their foccacia sandwhiches which are also both very unique and quite well crafted. I’ve also bought a whole wheat sourdough loaf from them as well and made a couple sandwiches with it. I’m addicted to this place (even though I’ve only been twice).

• GupShup: I am recently been going on a crusade to find a upscale indian restaurant that blows my mind and GupShup was one of those on the list to try. It didn’t blow my mind (still trying to get a Semma res in the hopes that they manage to do it) but it was actually quite unique. First, I got a spicy sweet mango lassi, which is something that I’ve never had before but I now want to have all my mango lassis this way. They did some other interesting things like a tandoori cauliflower that I haven’t seen before that were pretty decent and they have this collab dessert with Caffe Panna (my favorite ice cream place) but still on the lookout for the mind-blowing indian restaurant.

• Phoenicia Diner: The most sleeper place of them all. It’s currently at the top of my Beli list (which may just be a recency bias but I’ll re-evaluate later) but it is a decent ways out of New York. It’s something that you would go to during an Upstate New York roadtrip since it’s basically in the middle of nowhere. Anouska wasn’t nearly as mindblown as I was but I felt like they put so much care into everything on their menu, especially the breakfast items. Each breakfast item stood alone as the best version of that dish that I’ve ever had at a restaurant (I got some combination breakfast platter) and they partner heavily with local companies to source their ingredients. I am eagerly trying to find excuses to get back here.

Next week we’re getting back into econ stuff, specifically a part two to the politician’s incentive job search model.