New York Renewal

Spring is the season of renewal.  Look around.  The bright yellow buds on the forsythia, the slices of green on hyacinths and jonquils and tulips slicing through earth that has laid a brown shroud over everything through the winter. The same sort of renewal brings a good feeling to Manhattan these days.  The disasters of last Sept. 11 are slowly drifting into memory, though it's a memory that can clutch the throat at many, often small and innocent, stimuli.  Crowds are on the streets again.  Local shoppers examine the green market in Union Square or visit street merchants in Chinatown; out-of-towners giggle at souvenir booths in Times Square.  Restaurants and theaters are busy again. A long weekend in the city was an adventure in good cheer.  No city of my acquaintance offers the sheer volume and variety of things to eat, from every conceivable country of origin. Dishes of impeccable flavor, of the highest quality, are available at any hour of the day or night, and we sampled a considerable amount, strictly in an effort to restore confidence and spread some capital around, of course.  New York's culinary greatness lies in its infinite variety of fare, available on street corners and in the highest temples of haute cuisine.  It isn't a movable feast; the city is like a soft and voluptuous courtesan, always available, always happy to see you and please you. I'm a fan of street food, under the theory that as you walk from one vendor to another, it's a good way to burn calories, even as you consume them. I can also settle down to a multi-course meal at a single restaurant, or I can stroll through a neighborhood almost anywhere in Manhattan, eating an appetizer here, a soup there, an entree somewhere else – and always room for dessert.  Or two desserts, with a nod to the wise person who once said, "Life is short.  Eat dessert first." The current favorites on New York menus – you see them most places – are comfort foods like lamb shanks and short ribs of beef, meats that need braising and long cooking to become fork-tender, with lots of flavor.  Veal cheeks are another popular item, known for their tenderness, and we saw sweetbreads on many menus, too.  In terms of seafood, New Yorkers seem to prefer clams to oysters, and there is skate on many menus, a fish that adapts to the flavors of fine sauces.  At one time, skate was carved into circles and served as scallops, but someone discovered it could be served under its own name with considerable success. The Harrison, 355 Greenwich St. (at Harrison Street), 212-274-9310: Far enough south in TriBeCa (a geographical semi-acronym for "Triangle Below Canal [Street]") to see the searchlights illuminating the still-shocking site where the World Trade Center stood, the Harrison is one of the hot new restaurants in the neighborhood that once was a wholesale fruit and vegetable market but which now is home to fancy lofts, movie studios owned by people like Robert De Niro and some very upscale restaurants and shops. The restaurant is warm and the decor is simple,  with walls of aging wood (the building probably began life as a warehouse, although the ceilings here are pleasantly low), a long bar and an active young staff.  The fare is contemporary American, which means that it includes some of everything, touching on seafood and steaks, but with some European and Asian touches in the sides and the spicing. The Harrison also boasts a superb French aperitif known as Rinquinquin, pronounced with a deep, throaty rasp as Ran-Can-Can.  A light wine, slightly sweet and made from peaches which leave a lasting flavor, it is one of the finest pre-dinner drinks of my experience. Sweetbreads, braised with bacon and a touch of garlic, were a spectacular appetizer, and so were deep-fried clams that were sweet, juicy and absolutely delicious, even better than the Howard Johnson's variety that both the Guru and Mrs. Guru remember from childhoods that included Howard J., despite being otherwise vastly different. An outstanding, garlic-happy aioli and a fiery hot horseradish chili sauce came alongside, but the clams were so good by themselves the sauces remained mostly uneaten Skate and monkfish, broiled simply, were both excellent main courses, and a side of fries, crisp and dusted with paprika, were splendid. Midtown Manhattan, near the theater district, is awash in restaurants of all types, from traditional steakhouses and the overrated Sardi's to good bargains and meals to match at Ollie's Noodle House or Virgil's Barbecue.   Utsav, 46th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues (212-575-2525): An Indian restaurant on an upper level of a theater lobby, this calm oasis in the midst of midtown hustle and bustle offers Indian dishes from all over that nation.  Lots of tandoori cooking, plus plates that originated in Goa, Kerala, Kashmir, Punjab, Maharashtra and other regions  For lunch, there is a busy buffet, but dinner is much calmer, with service from a dignified group. A pre-theater dinner, served until well after curtain time, offers three courses for $20, with entrees including chicken, lamb and vegetable dishes, and a first course of soup or kebabs of various types.  Excellent naan, that fine Indian bread similar to a pita, comes alongside, as do the crisp, light, slightly tangy papadums, one of my favorite bread dishes. And speaking of naan, Utsav offers it stuffed with spinach, onions, garlic or potatoes, and the spinach version, hot and redolent with the vegetable, was a delight.  And speaking of spinach, the spinach dumplings were another winner, with a light, flaky pastry surrounding tender spinach leaves. Tomato soup, starring tomatoes that had been roasted, displays a light hand with spices and some interesting herb flavors to bolster it, and shish kebab with ground, spiced lamb was excellent.  Fish-and-coconut curry, in contrast, didn't work, with no indication of coconut and not much of curry. The fish was fine, but the extra flavors necessary to get it out of the ordinary failed to show up. Utsav entrees are in the $15-$30 range, and the menu shows some imaginative writing, like "savoury awakenings," for appetizers, "magic of the earth" for vegetable entrees and "sweet fantasy" atop a list of four very ordinary desserts, without a fantasy to the group. Marseille, 630 Ninth Ave, at 44th Street, 212-333-3410: New and moderately priced (entrees $12-$20), this large, comfortable French-Moroccan restaurant is a short walk from any of the major Broadway theaters and offers satisfactory, if not great, French meals with a North African influence, shown in dishes like falafel and combination appetizer platters under the generic term of "mezze," used along the southern Mediterranean coast from Morocco to the Middle East. Marseille splits them between land and sea, with an attractive, if small, portion of two or three items, beautifully displayed and quite tasty.  A small piece of sweetbread, and a delicious chunk of well-marinated steak were among them.  Shrimp falafel, however, disappointed, with no noticeable shrimp; maybe they were ground, or perhaps extruded shrimp have joined the similarly fashioned crabmeat. However, seafood lasagna was excellent, with superior flavor and solid preparation of the pasta.  Splendid tastes accompanied the short ribs and cheeks (well, they were ubiquitous enough that we had to try them) with the former arriving quite lean and very flavorful. Cheeks were meaty, tender and delicious. Dessert was described as date sponge cake, but there was little flavor of dates. However, there was good caramel ice cream and chocolate sauce, and with the texture of the cake, it was much like the sticky toffee pudding (STP) offered at the St. Louis Brewery and at Zinnia, but both the St. Louis restaurants do better than the Marseille did.   Barney Greengrass, 541 Amsterdam Ave., between 86th and 87th Streets, 212-724-4707: An old-fashioned Jewish-style smoked fish house that bills itself as "the sturgeon king" and has been around for 94 years, this is a truly great breakfast or lunch spot, where crowds wait outside on the wide sidewalk and a feisty little guy named Joey takes names and calls them when tables are ready.  Gary Greengrass is the third generation of ownership.  His father, Moe, died Jan. 1 at the age of 84, and his grandfather was the original Barney. Given items like smoked sturgeon and salmon (lox), caviar and smoked meats, this is not a bargain meal, but the food is wonderful and the people-watching exceptional. Kevin Kline is a regular customer, according to Greengrass, who has inherited his father's tall stool at the cash register and wry sense of humor, as well as the business, and Alec Baldwin, on his way out, paused and delivered a stylish wink to Mrs. Guru. Bagels and bialys are primary breads, but there's rye or pumpernickel for pastrami or corned beef sandwiches.  Eggs are special, too, in combinations with smoked fish or meat, or by themselves, or in omelettes.  Scrambled eggs with lox and onions is a long-time favorite of most customers, who are offered a choice of regular lox, which is salty, or the more expensive, less-salty Nova Scotia salmon.   Seating is extremely tight, decor is nonexistent, and waiters, always in a hurry, tend to be curt, though not rude.  No reservations, no credit cards and hope for good weather, because the waiting room has the sky for a ceiling.  Moe Greengrass, by the way, lived across the street in an apartment house, and when the phone rang at the restaurant, it also rang in the apartment, keeping him on top of the business at all times. A New York institution. Lombardi's, 32 Spring Street, 212-941-7994: As Chinatown expands, Little Italy and the Lower East Side contract, but civic legends like Lombardi's will never change.  Established around the turn of the last century, Lombardi's is grandfathered into still being able to use a coal oven for its pizzas, and as space has shrunk in the dining room, more and more people are eating in the kitchen. Lombardi's, where prices are modest, offers simple fare – large pizzas and larger ones, with the usual toppings. Crusts are of medium thickness, toppings are spread with a generous hand, and they are hot and delicious.  There are some salads, too (with one arriving large enough to serve three people), and some baked clams, but this is primarily a pizza house, serving outstanding pizzas. There are clam pizzas, too, but they are known here as clam pies and do not have tomato sauce or a lot of cheese.  It involves crust, some garlic, some onions, a small amount of parmesan cheese (there's more on the table) and a lot of clams.  It being New York, both pizzas and pies are divided into old-fashioned pie-cut wedges, though they are large ones. The kitchen is crowded, with pizza boxes that stretch to the ceiling and tourists easily identified by cameras focused on the pizza cooks.  For this tourist, it would have been better to focus on a lissome waitress who had a large, full-color tattoo of a Cadillac emblem on her lower back, visible whenever she bent over. She referred to herself, however, as "the Cadillac of waitresses," and she might well have been.  Her boyfriend allowed as how she had a Mercedes emblem on her ankle, but we never saw that one. Triple Eight Palace, 88 East Broadway, 212-941-8886: And what's the point of eating in New York without a visit to Chinatown?  There is none, thank you, so we found the Triple Eight Palace.  Eights are lucky numbers in China, or so we were told in Hong Kong, and they certainly were for us in Chinatown. The Palace is a huge place, up a flight of stairs in a building that also seems to serve as a supermarket, jewelry store, travel agency, souvenir shop and lots more.  At the entrance, a woman stands over a long stove and prepares many dishes, with large clams and tiny snails over a pair of burners, and other mysterious things steaming away.  But that's only a beginning, like coming attractions before the feature film.  Once you're inside, at a table, the fun begins. Parades of young woman come from the kitchen, pushing serving carts, each smelling better than the one that came before.  There are language problems, but the servers are able to be understood when it comes to the main ingredient of the dish – shrimp dumplings, chicken feet, pork dumplings, eggplant, fish dumplings, rice, cookies, taro root. The list seems endless, and it's easy to work up additional appetite by walking to the entrance for the dishes prepared there. Chicken feet are a dish that goes back to my grandmother's dining table, where the first grandchild always found one in his soup bowl. Those tiny snails are small enough so that toothpicks, and not forks, bring the meat from the shell, or you can just pick up the shells and suck on them, as if they were crawfish heads. They're in a soy-ginger sauce, and clams arrive in a similar sauce but with some black beans added.  Dumplings are wrapped in skin much lighter and more tender than most St. Louis dim sum spots, and the dumplings themselves are larger in terms of the filling.  Fish balls are light and juicy, and spare ribs are tangy with a sauce heightened with rice vinegar.  Egg rolls roll on by, and hacked chicken, both hot and cold, shows up on several carts. The aura of ginger is a constant. Interestingly, and deliciously, eggplant is almost sweet, and melt-in-the-mouth tender; broccoli is bright green and fresh enough to tempt one who is not usually tempted by broccoli. And sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves is outstanding, generously studded with large nuggets of wonderfulness like the faintly sweet sausage known as lop cheung and bits of chicken. As in most dim sum restaurants, waitresses mark up the checks as they place dishes on the tables, and prices are not posted.  I stopped counting after a little while, but I know that two of us ate for more than an hour and stumbled out into busy Chinatown streets for a shade over $50.  I'm not sure how many dumplings we consumed, but it was a lot.