Catch: Top Chef’s Hung Huynh’s new NYC Restaurant

As you all know very well (or should by now), Mike and I are total Top Chef sluts.  So when we were in search of a dinner location, we decided to try Top Chef’s Hung Huynh’s (Season 3 winner) new restaurant in Meatpacking.  Catch is a 3 floor restaurant, with the top floor dedicated to rooftop drinking.  It is owned by Mark Birnbaum (some of you will see this as funny as I do) and Eugene Remm and is the third restaurant in the EMM Group (the other 2 are Abe & Arthur’s and Lexington Brass) but I know them better as the owners of Tenjune (and many other night clubs).

The address is 21 Ninth Ave, but the entrance is actually around the corner on 13th street next to some construction and only identified by a C with an anchor above the door.  You feel lucky to have found it, then you get into a completely unidentified elevator bank where you look around for a sign.  You try to keep up appearances (after all, you are in the Meatpacking district), but deep down inside you can’t help but wonder why it’s so trendy to not tell people where to get into your business.  Lucky for us, someone else came in and immediately hit Floor 2… which opens up to a very modern, very Meatpacking space.

I absolutely loved the weird fish in a suit on the menu cover.  Hipster? Sure! But it gave me a chuckle.  I immediately read the request for no flash photography, so apologies in advance for these dark iPhone photos!

We started with oysters (I have been on a kick lately) and they were very good.  Not Imperial No. 9 good, but good.

We then had The Catch Roll, which is crab, salmon, and miso honey… with just a touch of awesome.   The sweetness of the miso honey was absolutely perfect on the roll.

There was nothing not to like about this. The textures, the flavors… it all came together perfectly.  I wanted to lick the miso honey off the plate but I refrained…

Next up we tried the Macaroni and Lobster Cream.  You know everything about macaroni and cheese that is good in the world? This was all of that with lobster and a slight crunch on top.  It was heaven.

We also tried the White Flatbread with clams, parmesan, and garlic.  This was good, but not great. If this was all I ate here, I would be disappointed.  It just wasn’t clammy enough.  The crust was nice and crispy, the garlic and cheese were good, but I was expecting more clam.

For our entree, we split the Scallop & Cauliflower which came with pistacchio and tamarind brown butter.  This was one of the most unique scallops dishes I have ever had.  I love scallops, so I eat them a lot, but they get pretty basic.  They taste so good just simply seared, that they really don’t NEED anything else.  This was a very happy addition, however, as it added to the flavor without overpowering it.  Awesomely delicious.

The dessert menu looked so scrumptious that we just had to try SOMETHING.

So we opted for the peanut butter cup souffle.

When it came, the souffle was hot and domed (perfectly cooked) and then picked up what I think was ice cream off the plate and dropped it into the center.

I was a bit worried about this, since really a souffle is good because of the texture, but this actually cooled it down so we could eat it and didn’t detract from the flavor.  I will say, however, that it is a souffle.  A peanut butter souffle.  I was hoping for a bit more chocolate in it.  It was still good.  But only if you like souffles (I like them… but I don’t LOVE them).

What I did love, however, was the peanut butter popsicles (tasted like fantastic peanut butter gelato dipped in a hardened chocolate shell) and the little square chocolate cups filled with ground peanuts and what I think was peanut butter, sugar, and maybe some honey.  Scrum-diddly-umptuous.

Overall, the food here was spectacular.  Very unique flavor combinations and artfully put together.

The one drawback, however, was our waiter.  He was everything that people hate about the Meatpacking district.  He was snooty, inattentive, and downright douchey.  He looked down his nose at us (I think because I was taking pictures) and made 0 effort to deliver even the most basic service.  For instance, he came to take orders from the tables around us on 3 separate occasions, all of whom sat after we did, each time barely spending a moment to put a “1 second” finger up towards us as he didn’t even make eye contact.  It took a good 30 minutes before he took our order, we somehow never got bread (pretty sure everyone else did), and when he came to finally take it, he made us feel as though we were entirely inconveniencing him.  It was a shame he was so bad since everything else was so good.

But the food was absolutely worth it.  It became obvious why Hung won Top Chef… his food tastes as good as it looks.

Total Nom Points: 8.5 out of 10

Corner Shop Cafe

At a recent food event at Albert Hall Tavern, we had the good fortune of meeting the couple behindIf You Can Make That You Can Make This.  We decided to get together to try another new restaurant in the West Village, Corner Shop Cafe, on Broadway and Bleecker.

It was well decorated in an appealing and different way.

I especially enjoyed the tin ceilings.

First order was a cuban sandwich.

It was good, but nothing special.

We ordered the brussels sprouts, which sounded similar to our favorite preparation method, however, these were very dissapointing.  A little too oily, a little undercooked, a little low in flavor.

There was also an order of grilled salmon nicoise with a poached egg.  I’m not a salmon fan, unless it’s in the form of lox, but I was told this was also just average.

We also ordered the mac and cheese which was truffled with peas and prosciutto.  We also found this to be just average.

Overall, I think the word “average” completely sums it up.  Great location.  Great look and feel.  Great idea.  Average execution.

Total Nom Points: 5.5 out of 10

Stinkin’ Up the Joint

Mike and I decided to endeavor on grilling fish in my apartment.  One of my favorite kitchen tools is a stove top grill (I bought mine on sale for $50 from Williams Sonoma a few years ago but it does not appear they have it any more).  It fits across two burners and makes mean pancakes on the flat side and great chicken on the ridged side.  Fish was a new undertaking, however.

Now I have a large kitchen by NYC standards, however, it is poorly ventilated and the smoke alarm is in a tiny hallway right outside the room.  The tragedy of this event involved me standing below the smoke alarm for upwards of 20 minutes waving a magazine.  This paled in comparison, however, to the even greater tragedy of making my entire apartment smell of fish for the next four days.

I will sidenote here for a second to talk about the request that went out to all of my friends on Facebook for advice on how to get the smell of fish out of ones apartment when opening all the windows, lighting candles, febreezing, spraying air freshener, and putting out baking soda didn’t work.  I got some very interesting responses.  Lavender oil, scrubbing everything down with lemons, oil reeds, and roasting coffee beans in a skillet came up.  The most creative response, however, came from Mike’s Aunt Helene who gave us his Aunt Meggie’s trick: Boil water in a pot and then cover it and put cinnamon on the lid.  Wouldn’t you know it? It worked!  The smell was hardly detectable after about 30 minutes of boiling.  Good to know!

As for the food itself, it turned out pretty well.  I have come to the conclusion though that I need to accept that I just don’t like salmon.  Smoked is fine, but when it’s cooked I’m just not a fan.  Mike made salmon for himself and a tuna steak for me.  He also prepared an awesome, off the cuff soy, garlic, and ginger sauce for us to dip the fish in.  We paired it with some boxed butternut squash risotto and threw tomatoes and zuccini on the grill pan when the fish was done.  We then enjoyed our labors on the balcony, which was lovely.

Market Fresh Cooking

I love Markets.  Farmer’s Markets are my favorite and I’ve always loved Chelsea Market.  I like walking into a place having no idea what I’ll cook and selecting my dinner based on what looks the best that day.  The only problem I have with NYC markets is that they’re crowded and it can sometimes be very annoying to have to push through everyone.  Nothing in Union Square Market was calling out to me, especially not enough to go through the crowd any more, so Mike and I made our way to Chelsea Market for the fish at The Lobster Place.

I felt overwhelmed at the fish counter, however, I wound up selecting the Turbot.  Why? I have no idea.  It just called out to me (and perhaps had the word “buttery” on the description) and was something I had never tried.  The sign also mentioned that it resembled halibut, so when struggling to find a yummy sounding turbot recipe, we looked into how to cook halibut and found an easy butter/shallot sauce that sounded good (so much for eating healthy with fish)!  We added the homemade pasta bought from the Italian market and made our favorite brussel sprouts recipe once again.  The scallops also looked great, and are always a favorite, so we cooked some of those up for an app (just a touch of egg, then flour, then pan seared).  It was a hearty and rich meal that we thoroughly enjoyed.  We also picked up some of my favorite Fat Witch brownies for dessert.  YUM!

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Shallot Butter Sauce

·         Pound Butter — softened

·         2 Shallots — chopped

·         1 Cup White Wine

·         1/2 Cup White Wine Vinegar

·         1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice (we went without)

·         Salt And Pepper — to taste

Directions 

Saute shallots with the wine & vinegar. Reduce the liquid for 10 minutes until the pan is dry, and only shallots remain. Whisk in butter. After butter is totally melted, add remaining ingredients, bring to boil. Remove from heat, keep warm. 

Cooking class at ICE

For our anniversary, I gave Mike a gift certificate to The Institute of Culinary Education (AKA ICE) since we have been enjoying cooking together so much. He was nice enough to take me with him to learn how to make “Great New York Restaurants’ Signature Dishes.”

From ICE’s website: “Thanks to Chef-Instructor Loren Banco, enjoying your favorite dishes from some of New York’s best restaurants is only a class away. You will learn the following signature dishes and desserts: from Balthazar, Salad Balthazar; from Babbo, Mint Love Letters; from Craft, Hanger Steak with Bordelaise Sauce; from Le Bernardin, Roast Monkfish on Savoy Cabbage and Bacon-Butter Sauce; and from Gotham Bar and Grill, Warm Chocolate Cake.”

Mike and I had a great time making the recipes, and we specifically focused on making the filling for the raviolis (“Mint Love Letters”) and the fish.  Everything was delicious and I learned quite a bit.

The teacher was a bit… militant, however.  He stressed everyone out by yelling at them for odd things (like keeping a single piece of fish in a pan for the moment in between transferring in a new one).  I wanted him to teach us more about techniques that I can use every day and less about “well this ingredient is impossible to find for regular people so you can try to substitute xyz but it won’t be the same.” 

We also met some fun people there and overall it was really fun.

Unfortunately my camera battery was dying (and I seem to have misplaced the charger, which is the reason I haven’t been posting as I have no pictures), however, I managed to get a shot of the steak (the sauce was incredible) and the fish (bar blanc sauce is amazing) right before the camera fully died.