Cocoron Soba

Address: 61 Delancey St, New York, NY (Between Eldridge St & Allen St)

Phone:  212-925-5220

http://www.cocoron-soba.com

This tiny soba shop on Delancey Street at Lower East Side call Cocoron is probably one of our favorite restaurants in New York City these days. Cocoron (which mean "warm heart" in Japanese), makes the most original and delicious soba dish in town. When the weather is cold and freezing, nothing beats a nice bowl of homemade soba served in the most amazing broth ever. Cocoron offers a selection of cold soba and hot soba soup, but our favorite there is the stamina dipping soba with chicken meat balls -- a bowl of homemade broth and chicken meat balls served on miniature hot pot, with a plate of cold soba on the side to be dipped into the lovely broth just before eating. Normally, there is a region where a certain style of soba/ramen are from in Japan; but when asked about where stamina soba was originated, the owner proudly told us that it was a NYC creation! Thumbs up!

Just like most soba restaurants, Cocoron does not take reservation and it can get pretty crowded during week nights. So make sure you go early!

Traif

Address: 229 S 4th St, Brooklyn, NY (between Havemeyer St and Roebling St)

Phone: 347-844-9578

http://traifny.com

Time flies! Gan and I have been living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for almost four months now and we are loving every minute of it. We moved there because we fell in love with the food, the people, the shops... basically everything there. So nowadays, instead of driving into the city for brunch on the weekends, we enjoy exploring our neighborhood and trying out good places that most Brooklynites have already discovered some time ago. Pies N Thighs, Dokebi, Samurai Mama, Diner, Marlow and Sons, Caracas Arepa and Egg are just some of the good restaurants in the area.

When most places concentrate on making the same old brunch menu to satisfy the NY brunch crowd, Traif differentiates itself by doing what it does best - unique and interesting small dishes/tapas style food. Roasted beets with yogurt and cheese, bacon wrapped stuffed dates on spinach, egg-in-a-nest, comice pear salad are some of the dishes we really liked. The sweet and savory comice pear salad and roasted beets with yogurt and cheese were light and appetizing, great starters to prep the palate before the heavier dishes arrive. The smoked salmon bravas was also a nice take on the traditional Spanish patata bravas dish, it was playful and delicious! We thought the fried chicken and biscuit dish was just alright, especially when compared to the ones served at the fried chicken temple - Pies N Thighs.

Overall, we had a wonderful dining experience at Traif --- dishes were creative, delicious and we had a nice table at the patio garden. Our waitress was fantastic and helpful as well. Can't wait for summer so we can enjoy the food at their open air garden seating.

Recommended dishes: Comice pears salad, smoked salmon bravas, egg-in-a-nest and roasted red beet, bacon-wrapped blue cheese-stuffed dates (this one especially is a surprise. it looks like some type of mutated bug but it tasted absolutely delicious.. even the crispy bacon outside and goeey and sticky cheese inside gives it a bug texture. yikes! be adventurous, it's worth it.)

Comice pears, Cranberries, Radish, Bacon, Blue Cheese, Pistachios, Greens, Truffle Vin

smoked salmon bravas, Traif version of Patata Bravas

Bellflower pasta

bacon-wrapped blue cheese–stuffed dates, spinach a la catalana (the bug dish)

egg-in-a-nest, brie-roast portabello panini, truffle cream

bacon-egg-cheese sliders, smoked belly, blue cheese, sweet potato fries

Roasted red beets, Burrata cheese, Pomegranate,Yogurt, Mint

Le Comptoir

Address: 5, Carrefour de l'Odéo, Paris 

Phone: +33 (0)1 44 27 07 97

It's been about five months since our Paris food tour in February, and I'm missing Le Comptoir more and more each day. Of all of the places we have eaten in Paris this last trip (L'Arpege, Chateaubriand, L'atelier de Joel Robuchon, Frenchie, L'epi Dupin), Le Comptoir is definitely our favorite. Maybe we are bias because we stayed in Relais Saint Germain hotel next door (also owned by Le Comptoir Chef Yves Camdeborde and his wife Claudine) and get to eat the most amazing breakfast at Le Comptoir every morning, but it was the restaurant's $57 five course set menu dinner that totally blew us away. I haven't had baby eel (angulas) since Asador Etxebarri, and Chef Camdeborde's angulas with roasted garlic was superb, enhanced by the slight smokiness and aroma of the perfectly roasted garlic, this dish was to die for. Similarly, the mackerel with squid ink was the single best fish dish that we have ever tasted. The mackerel was grilled to perfection and served on top of a bed of squid ink. Who knew they'd go so well together? We were thoroughly impressed! The other dishes like oysters with lemon zest, lobster with macaroni and sweet breads were sublime as well. The highlight of the dinner was definitely the Le Comptoir generous cheese course; which restaurant in this world would hand you a large tray of different types of cheese like Timanoix, Beaufort, Brie etc with lovely Cerise Noir and tell you to enjoy it as much as you can before passing the tray to the next table? Needless to say, Gan and I were in cheese heaven that night. You may be surprised to hear this, but getting a reservation at Le Comptoir was actually harder than getting a reservation at Chateaubriand or Frenchie. When I first called the restaurant for a table in February, I was told that it was fully booked until May, and it will be impossible to get a table. But with a combination of research and luck, I discovered that the restaurant does reserve a few tables for its hotel guests at Relais Saint Germain hotel next door, and that was the only other way to score a table at Le Comptoir in February besides personally knowing the chef! 

Some of you may not know, but Chef Yves Camdeborde is actually a legend in the restaurant industry, known as one of the first few chefs who started the food culinary movement in Paris known as "Le Fooding" in the early 90s. Le fooding movement is all about going against the old fashion and inflexible standards and rules for French cuisines and their single and most important lifelong goal of pursuing the Michelin stars by reaching for perfections in every single aspects. Le Fooding is all about presenting elegant and creative food minus the pretense, snobbery and hefty price tag. It is about giving every food lovers out there a chance to taste world class, ambitious French cooking that is used to be available only for those who can afford to eat at places such as Le Meurice, Ritz and Hôtel de Crillon. We love Chef Camdeborde for paving the ways for new generation of Le Fooding chefs like Inaki Aizpitarte of Le Chateaubriand and Gregory Marchand of Frenchie restaurant, and for cooking amazing French food that does not cost an arm and a leg.

Just like the Noveau cuisine movement that had modernized French cuisines in the early part of the century, Le Fooding is the 21st century French culinary movement that will once again propel French cuisines to the next level, making it a world class cuisine that is current and here to stay.

Restaurant interior

oyster with lemon zests

angulas with roasted garlic

mackerel with squid ink

sweet bread

Lobster with macaroni

dessert

out-of-this-world cheese course

World's Best Restaurants - Top 10

In conjunction with the newly released S.Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants 2011, here is a short review of the 7 restaurants we've tried from the Top 10 list (pictures and links attached).

#1: Noma -- Hope to try soon!

#2: El Celler De Can Roca -- Need to make a trip to Spain again for El Celler De Can Rosa!

#3: Mugaritz -- One of our favorite restaurants. See posting and food pictures here.

#4: Osteria Francescana -- The food is so out of this world it's hard to describe in words (hence no proper posting yet). But here are some of the food photos for now:

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#5: The Fat Duck -- It's nice, but abit too gimmicky if you ask me. The whole experience was like going to a food circus, except all I wanted was to eat. Some pictures of the food we ate in Fat Duck:

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#6: Alinea -- Hands down the best restaurant in America. Grant Achatz is a genius.

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#7: DOM -- Next stop, Brazil.

#8: Arzak -- We are big fans of Juan Mari Arzak and Elena Arzak, and the Arzak restaurant. They came to say hi to everyone at the table and had proper conversations with us. Food was spectacular; even though we were already overdosed with our 13 course meal at Asador Etxebarri earlier. See what we ate at Arzak here.

#9: Le Chateaubriand -- The food was good, but we weren't wowed. Maybe due to chef Inaki Aizpitarte not present in the kitchen that night.

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#10: Per Se -- One of the best restaurants in New York. See posting here.

The French neo-bistrot movement

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When I read the neo-bistrot movement on the Wall Street Journal/New York Times, it made me think. What is it that makes people in food industry to want to make a statement, consciously or unconsciously?

To draw a parallel, this is not much different than another creative industry. Independent music has been changing how consumers listen and attend concerts. In a way, they are the anti-mass consumerism, anti-mass media appeal, anti-establishment of their industry. Food is no different. I think Anthony Bourdain captures the essence of the movement succinctly. If you are a young turk, looking to unseat the U2's of the world, it is your duty to piss on the establishments. High end fine dining and Michelin starred restaurants, take notice! This is the shot across the bow by the hippies of our generation.

Our trip to Paris is in a way, our pilgrimage back to where our fine dining culinary adventure began. As I sit comfortably in the Eurostar making its bullet fast trip from London to Paris, listening to Temper Trap's Sweet Disposition, I started pondering what we would find in Paris. Frenchie, Le Chateaubriand and Le Comptoir. They are not exactly still struggling to rise up. To be fair, they are probably an establishment even more difficult to get a reservation than L'atelier de Joel Robuchon or l'Arpege. I think Sarah had drawn up an immaculate list of the old U2 establishments versus the new Phoenix establishments.

I feel alive.