Eater NY - Old Classic, New Classic: How New York Dining Has EvolvedThe New York City Restaurant, Bar, and Nightlife Bloghttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52682/favicon-32x32.png2015-01-30T13:17:50-05:00http://ny.eater.com/rss/stream/77121082015-01-30T13:17:50-05:002015-01-30T13:17:50-05:00Old Classic, New Classic: The Legacy of the New York Power Breakfast
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/pqEeFQEFsVExz1k9-G--NSiiWRE=/112x0:1889x1333/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/45593008/20150120Devra_Breakfast2.0.0.jpg" />
</figure>
<p>Early morning breakfasts at The Loews Regency and The NoMad are for the regulars, not the observers.</p> <p dir="ltr"><img align="right" alt="Classics Week logo" src="https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3345210/eaterclassicsweek_fade.0.jpg"><em>All this week, as a </em><a sl-processed="1" href="http://ny.eater.com/classics-week-2015"><em>Classics Week</em></a><em> special, Eater is sending correspondents to classic New York restaurants and their newer counterparts, to see how the two compare. They'll report back on the scene at both, suss out the differences, and maybe even shed some light on what makes the classic a classic. Up today, Associate Editor Devra Ferst, with a look at the early morning power scene:</em></p>
<p>As my dining companion and I waited for a table amid pairs and trios of men in well-tailored suits, and women with perfectly placed hair early on a Tuesday morning at the Loews Regency Hotel she remarked, "When you live in New York, it's easy forget that there are so many other New Yorks happening at the same time — sub-communities that rarely intersect." This was not our New York. We felt very far, literally and culturally, from our Brooklyn apartments where breakfast is coffee and perhaps some toast or yogurt eaten haphazardly while half dressed for work.</p>
<p>For some New Yorkers, the power breakfast is a ritual that takes place on the way from expensive Upper East Side apartments to grand but chaotic offices in Midtown and on Wall Street. In response to the havoc of New York in the 1970's, Loews' then-owner, Preston Robert ("Bob") Tisch, invited leaders in business and politics to an early morning breakfast. Tisch beckoned influencers with the suggestion, "We'll talk and figure this out," explains longtime New York restaurant consultant Clark Wolf. "It was a very effective word of mouth campaign to get New York going in the right direction again." Deals were discussed at one table and sealed at another. "People table hopped like crazy," explains Wolf.</p>
<p><q class="pullquote float-right">The environment is civil but intense, as if the steam wafting from the $7.50 cups of coffee has caffeinated the entire room.</q></p>
<p>An entire culture grew around the breakfast at The Loews Regency, and it has continued for 40 years. Chauffeurs of regulars wait outside, while diners grab one of the five papers stacked along the bar and are escorted to a table in the dining room, greeting colleagues and social acquaintances at tables they pass. Less established members of the club make the rounds of tables, to "glad hand and network," and pay homage, explains Adeena Sussman, who is co-authoring a book with Lee Schrager tentatively called <em>Breakfast in America</em>, and recently attended the breakfast with Jonathan Tisch, Bob's son.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rWBUJ4qs7f3VhvIS-Z2HevLidNs=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3357602/20150120Devra_Breakfast16.0.jpg">
</figure>
<p>Downtown, a new younger generation of stylish influencers, who work at nearby tech companies, fashion houses, PR firms, and the like joined the cult, making the tradition their own at The NoMad, The Breslin, and a few other restaurants. Mark Zuckerberg clones in hoodies and blazers tap away on their laptops, sipping Intelligentsia Coffee, as 20-something women who work in the fashion world pick at their breakfasts or sip a green juice in The NoMad's skylighted atrium. The clientele is younger, the approach to food more contemporary and in focus, and the hour of attendance later, but the family resemblance is clear. This is a place to work and network, where who you are eating with is just as important as who sees you eating with them (or, more likely, reads about it later on Instagram).</p>
<p>Back uptown, on that Tuesday morning, the environment is civil but intense, as if the steam wafting from the $7.50 cups of coffee has caffeinated the entire room. Cabs whiz by down Park Avenue through the large windows. The room, which was overhauled in 2013, has some color thanks to its patterned carpet, but still feels corporate with its grey walls, and traditional with its white table cloths and heavy hotel china. Large photos of the Financial District decorate some of the walls, reminding everyone why they are here — either they are a titan, or are working to become one.</p>
<p>When we arrive at 8:30 a.m. for our reservation, we are offered a seat by the bar or to wait 10 minutes for a table in the dining room. We wait. Sitting by the bar is like sitting in the balcony of congress — in the presence of power, while not holding any of it. As we wait, regulars sail by with greetings from the suited host.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cKQIiGTI2dKm2ZsbwiSl7FQTSYk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3356840/20150120Devra_Breakfast5.0.jpg">
</figure>
<p>The dining room is packed. A server who looks to be in his 50's comes to the table in a sharp lavender shirt and tie to hand us menus. The menu at the Loews, created by chef Dan Silverman, is big — even slightly overwhelming to the uninitiated. There are three set offerings, American, Continental, or "healthy," each big enough to please Donna Reed's standards. A generic three egg omelet, three varieties of eggs benedict and a "healthy" section that includes yogurt, egg white dishes, and oatmeal also make appearances. But, the menu is almost irrelevant. Most regulars have an order from the healthy section that the wait staff — many of whom who appear to have worked here for decades — knows.</p>
<p><q class="pullquote float-right">Throughout the meal, it's clear that there are two restaurants here happening side by side.</q></p>
<p>After bringing our order of a classic eggs benedict and a mushroom and cheddar omelet, the servers leave us alone for the rest of the meal, not bothering to offer more coffee or check in on the meal. The poached eggs, which sting slightly from their vinegar water bath, sit atop a country-style thick cut piece of ham, and a slightly tough english muffin. A nice hollandaise and potatoes that had been sitting for a few minutes too long finished the plate. Across the table, my companion's omelet is slightly overcooked, and sits next to a pile of mixed greens one might see at a nice but slightly dated hotel wedding. Throughout the meal, it's clear that there are two restaurants here happening side by side: One for regulars, where service is attentive, the food is more on point, and seats in the center of the dining room are a given, and another for the few like us — 20 years younger than the average diner, who have came to watch, but not participate in the power brokering.</p>
<p>For non-regulars, the food is far from bad, but it is equally as far from excellent. But that isn't the point. "People are not at the Regency to eat," says writer former <em>Times</em> critic Ruth Reichl. "They're there to be powerful and have important meetings and make deals."</p>
<p>Downtown, at The NoMad, things are different. Diners here are a generation younger and the crowd "cares profoundly about the food. That's one of their draws," says Reichl. That sentiment is felt at the first blush of the menu, which is petite but descriptive in the way that <a href="http://www.eater.com/2014/7/24/6181765/heres-what-every-trendy-restaurant-menu-looks-like">all hip, food-focused downtown restaurant menus</a> are these days. The coffee is clearly labeled from Intelligentsia, mushrooms in the omelet are identified as hen of the woods, the eggs benedict is made with crab and tarragon, not slabs of ham, and perhaps most glaring, salt shakers are replaced with small wooden bowls of Maldon flakes, brought out fresh for each party.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/7JLmTDm79_7JCWGE0biWd_KvCMA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3358878/20150119Devra_Breakfast21.0.jpg">
</figure>
<p>The eggs benedict here comes on a perfectly round house-made english muffin, and while the crab meat seems to have crawled over to one side of the muffin, it's well cooked and topped with precisely timed eggs that bleed when punctured, but not too much. Both are tucked under a fluffy duvet cover of hollandaise that is almost mousse-like, and served with a mixture of roasted and crushed baby potatoes and a small bundle of frisee dressed with lemon. Servers are outfitted much like their uptown counterparts in slacks and matching vests, but, like the diners, they are younger. Our servers are more attentive than their uptown counterparts, but not as on point as one expects from the NoMad's dinner service.</p>
<p>The full breakfast is only served in the NoMad's grand atrium, which even on a recent grey day feels like a space entirely outside of New York, quieter and more calm than uptown, closing off all views of the city except the sky. The room has an air of modern European elegance, with its long, heavy drapes. The white tablecloths are done away with and the hotel plates replaced with something one might find at a fine Japanese home goods store.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/3U5BKeuJ51iKaMkhuVR2rwmwMgg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3356836/20150119Devra_Breakfast1.0.jpg">
</figure>
<p>Breakfast at The NoMad for the young power elite is a less frequent occurrence than it is uptown, where power is older and wealthier, and can more easily afford to walk into the office 30 minutes late or pick up the $75 bill for two plates of eggs without wincing even slightly. Still, there are regulars. A large gentleman sits on the side of the atrium, splayed out on a banquette. Two younger diners sit across from him, engrossed by what he is saying, as the stylish women sitting at the next table discuss an upcoming fashion "campaign." This is not their first time dining here. The line between insider and this outsider here is thinner than uptown, but still palpable.</p>
<p>While the power lunch seems to have nearly disappeared as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/style/power-lunches-are-out-crumbs-in-the-keyboard-are-in.html">more people peck at salads at their desks</a>, the power breakfast has maintained its footing uptown, while being co-opted by a younger generation downtown — though it seems unlikely that the two groups are aware of one another. Still, this ritual is part of the life of two very small groups of New Yorkers. Stepping into their New Yorks for a morning or two is fascinating, but not a terribly gratifying dining experience. Neither the service, nor the food at either hotel was particularly remarkable, but that has more to do with the diners in question than the hotel's capabilities. Power breakfasts, both old and new, are built for the people who are part of the ritual, not observers of it.</p>
https://ny.eater.com/2015/1/30/7952223/old-classic-new-classic-the-legacy-of-new-yorks-power-breakfastsDevra Ferst2015-01-27T14:47:54-05:002015-01-27T14:47:54-05:00Old Classic, New Classic: Grand Steakhouse Dining at Delmonico's and American Cut
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/OpmukJx0I75-DTQwrCRBrfSFVdM=/0x0:3000x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/45557908/20130219-Lede2.0.0.jpg" />
</figure>
<p>All this week, as a <a href="http://ny.eater.com/classics-week">Classics Week</a> special, Eater is sending correspondents to classic New York restaurants and their newer counterparts, to see how the two compare. They'll report back on the scene at both, suss out the differences, and maybe even shed some light on what makes the classic a classic. Up today Eater NY senior editor and resident carnivore Nick Solares, with a look at two steakhouses:</p>
<p><img align="right" alt="classics week logo" src="https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3341200/eaterclassicsweek_fade.0.jpg">When comparing classic and modern steakhouses, one can easily choose two restaurants with far more drastic contrasts than Delmonico’s and American Cut. The stripped down, baroque aesthetic of <a href="http://ny.eater.com/venue/peter-luger">Peter Luger </a>versus the gleaming, over-the-top ostentation of the newly minted <a href="http://ny.eater.com/2015/1/22/7868579/hunt-fish-club-nyc">Hunt & Fish Club</a>, for example. Or the dark, sullen patina of <a href="http://ny.eater.com/venue/keens">Keens</a>, with its trove of historical artifacts, versus the moody, glitzy night club vibe of STK, where Bob Guccione might have felt immediately at home. But Keens, Peter Luger, the Palm, and The Old Homestead represent only one, albeit the most distinct, branch of the <a href="http://ny.eater.com/maps/a-guide-to-navigating-the-steakhouses-of-new-york-city">steakhouse family tree.</a> They spring from the beef steak dinners of the 19th Century, and of the tavern and the beer hall.</p>
<p>The other branch of the steakhouse family tree is older, grander, and starts with America’s first restaurant and steakhouse, Delmonico’s. While most of the city's steakhouses are rooted in very American, and specifically New York tropes, Delmonico's looked to the dining rooms of continental Europe, simply because there was nothing before it on these shores. American Cut certainly has a lot in common with the other branches of the steakhouse family tree, but it's closer in spirit to Delmonico's. Both are expressions of grand steakhouse dining. Not surprisingly, both are built on the legacy of a notable chef, something that is fairly uncommon in steakhouses.</p>
<p></p>
<div class="chorus-snippet wide-image-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ot3AMtBKYejRWXKeREOmCIpFd18=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3344930/20130219-Delmonico_Room.0.jpg">
</figure>
<p class="caption">[Delmonico's]</p> </div>
<p> </p>
<p>Delmonico’s was founded in 1827 as a small cafe by the brothers Peter and John Del-Monico, who emigrated from Switzerland specifically for that purpose. By 1830 it had grown in to a full blown restaurant, bringing a number of innovations to the American marketplace — Delmonico’s offered the first al la carte menu, the first wine list, and was arguably the first farm to table restaurant, after the brothers purchased a farm on Long Island in 1834 to supply produce.</p>
<p>The restaurant is, of course, most famous for naming the Delmonico cut of steak, but it also claims that lobster Newburg, eggs Benedict, and baked Alaska sprang from its kitchen. Charles Ranhofer helmed the restaurant during its defining golden age (1862-1881) and was America’s first celebrity chef. Successive generations of the Delmonico family (the hyphen was eliminated around the same time that the restaurant opened) ran the original location as well as operating several branches and a hotel in Manhattan for the next century, establishing Delmonico’s as a staid and luxurious brand.</p>
<div class="chorus-snippet image-grid-c"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A steak, cooked rare and cut into pieces" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/mEf9eyTv0JC775ayihpo-bxqZkU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3343632/20150123-Delmonico_PH.0.jpg">
<cite><a class="ql-link" href="https://www.instagram.com/nicksolares" target="_blank">Nick Solares</a>/Eater</cite>
</figure>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/VHu-JEBCmanN8B_byjq9tO2pP3E=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3343662/20150123-Delmonico_Lobster_newburg.0.jpg">
</figure>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/A83pkpVeV021Xc-aNZTl7-B0AoU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3343684/20150123-Delmonico_Caesar.0.jpg">
</figure>
<span> </span> </div>
<p class="caption">[Porterhouse, lobster Newburg, Caesar]</p>
<p>The restaurant has had a fractured lineage in the years since the last of the Delmonico family closed their restaurant in 1927. The name was resuscitated by one Oscar Tucci in 1929, who opened a Delmonico’s at the site of the original, much to the chagrin of the remaining Delmonico family who unsuccessfully sued to stop the use of the name. This particular incarnation lasted until 1977, when the building was sold. Since then it has been opened and closed several times but seems to have maintained an even keel and a steady course these last four years under chef Billy Oliva.</p>
<p>Of course, the chef is bound to certain dishes — the Delmonico steak and lobster Newburg for example, and he handles them with faithfulness and reverence. But they aren't the best things on the menu. According to Oliva the Delmonico steak, which is commonly a boneless ribeye, as it is at Delmonico's today, was historically not always the same cut. Instead, it was simply the best steak available on a given night. So it might have been a ribeye, but could also have been a T-bone or sirloin steak.</p>
<p>Next to the confounding popularity of the filet mignon (tender but with little flavor) the Delmonico steak is the second best seller at Delmonico's. But you shouldn't order either. While the Delmonico is from prime grade beef it is wet aged, lacking the deeper complexity of dry aged beef, which is most assuredly what was originally served at Delmonico's. How do we know this? Because wet aging has only been around since refrigeration became broadly adopted, well after the golden age of Delmonico's.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/g-ZMmNi2EbEOX3ORiTItf5a4aeM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3343680/20150123-Delmonico_delmonico_steak.0.jpg">
</figure>
<p class="caption">[Delmonico steak]</p>
<p>To get a truer historic Delmonico's experience, in everything but name, look to the rib steak, which is the same cut as the ribeye but with a bone; or the porterhouse for two. Both are dry aged for 28 days. The Delmonico cut is hardly a bum steer. It is tender and lithe, with a clean flavor and a splendid sear – what the steaks pictured on the sides of salt containers in the 1960's might have tasted like. But the difference between dry and wet aging is apparent in the depth of flavor found in the other cuts. They are just as tender as the Delmonico but exhibit a gentle funk from the age box that balances the sweetness of the corn finished beef. Cooked in a mercilessly hot broiler the steak emerge sizzling and smoking with a dense char and are seasoned simply with salt. The appetizers and sides tend to be more ornate at Delmonico's than at more stripped down steakhouses, but the hash browns and creamed spinach are probably the most satisfying, and the Caesar salad is as classic interpretation as you'll find. Dessert? Get the baked Alaska.</p>
<p>Arguably more charming than the food is the room. While it has obviously been remodeled several times, it maintains the grandeur and sweeping feel of a ballroom. And the service is more obsequious and intimate than the stereotypical gruff but affable steakhouse waiter. Delmonico's might not have quite the clearly defined lineage and unsullied reputation that it wants to evoke, amid the ups and downs of its recent history, but it has gone fair way towards doing so. Eating there feels like an authentic experience, especially the steaks.</p>
<p><span>If Delmonico's is patterned on a historical legacy, American Cut is a thoroughly modern restaurant in almost every regard. It is part of a prolific, national restaurant group. It is helmed by a celebrity chef. The room is art deco with hints of the speakeasy; it could fit right in to any number of locations and doesn't seem particularly rooted here, despite being quite pretty and comfortable. It isn't, despite being deemed the flagship, even the original location of the restaurant, an American Cut having previously opened in Atlantic City. While that location is now closed, there is a branch opening soon in Buckhead, Atlanta and more are certainly in the works. These are not necessarily ingredients that make for a particularly inspired steakhouse, especially in a city like New York, where there are more than a few options. Except that the celebrity chef in question is Marc </span><span>Forgione, who is as about as close to restaurant royalty as one gets in America. He also knows a thing or two </span><a href="http://www.eater.com/2014/10/8/6943343/how-to-not-fuck-up-a-steak-with-marc-forgione" style="line-height: 1.24; background-color: #ffffff;">about cooking steak.</a></p>
<div class="chorus-snippet wide-image-block"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/7HZKvFjVeKUwH4e-K_T4pJaBRH8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3344934/20150123-Amercian_Cut_interior.0.jpg">
</figure>
<p class="caption">[American Cut]</p> </div>
<p> </p>
<p>The son of pioneering chef Larry Forgione, who has been referred to as the "godfather of American cuisine," Marc Forgione is an accomplished chef in his own right, in addition to being a television personality. The chef found wide acclaim for the rib steak he served at his eponymous restaurant, so it's not surprising that he opened a steakhouse on the back of that success. American Cut is named as a homage to his father's ground breaking restaurant An American Place, and the menu is a nod the grand dining style spearheaded by Delmonico's and a broader homage to the city of New York itself.</p>
<div class="chorus-snippet image-grid-c"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/7wJ1LctuvuWkBAR8rpXLa973yJ8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3343706/20150123-Amercian_Cut_PH.0.jpg">
</figure>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/iQOcGp831jqrG1g-8wRjuZttpvI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3343710/20150123-American_Cut_Lobster.0.jpg">
</figure>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_YufC6W01Jwy_owPsvn_LRzTWG4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3343718/20150123-Amercian_Cut_Caesar.0.jpg">
</figure>
</div>
<p class="caption">[Porterhouse, Chili lobster, Caesar salad]</p>
<p>Rather than a simple parroting of the generic steakhouse menu, the one at American Cut is more considered, and the technique for cooking the steaks is more deliberate than a simple searing. Forgione brushes the steaks with what he calls the "mop," a mixture of rendered dry aged beef fat, butter, garlic, and herbs. He also bastes the steaks with butter, garlic and thyme after broiling them, adding flavor notes usually absent from the repertoire of most steakhouses.</p>
<div class="chorus-snippet image-grid-c"> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/w_5Vs39lyz4VQMq5Ib17Mv8d39g=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3343722/20131011-Amercian_Cut_NY_Steak.0.jpg">
</figure>
</div>
<p class="caption">[NYC Cut]</p>
<p>The NYC cut is even more complex in preparation and flavor. It is Forgione's "love letter" to the city combining two of its most iconic dishes — the dry aged steak and the pastrami sandwich. The beef is smoked with apple wood and then rubbed in pastrami spices before being grilled and anointed with lashings of caraway infused brown butter and spicy brown mustard. It might not satisfy the steak purist, but it is a compelling dish in its own right, using steak as a starting point and embodying the spirit of Ranhofer to take it further.</p>
<p>The rest of the menu is equally playful, yet reverent toward the classics. The chili lobster looks like an homage to lobster Newburg, but is really based on the Malaysian chili crab. The Caesar salad is chopped table-side, using a menacing looking mezzaluna blade, and the bone marrow comes dotted with escargot. The service at American Cut is brasher and faster paced than at Delmonico's but that is true of the restaurant in general.</p>
<p>The death nell of the traditional steakhouse continues to be sounded by naysayers, yet the genre more than endures, it thrives. Conversely the "nouveau" steakhouse trend of middle aughts, which sought to replace the traditional institutions, has been thoroughly discredited. One need only think back to V Steakhouse, Primehouse, Kobe Club and CraftSteak to see that those seeking to "redefine" or "reimagine" the steakhouse have a solution in search of a problem. The traditional steakhouse is essential to the dining life of the city, and especially those that seek to elevate the experience beyond a plate of meat and potatoes. That's not to say that modern interpretations of the steakhouse like M. Wells Steak and Bowery Meat Company are unwelcome. They strengthen the dining scene over all, and offer a fascinating juxtaposition to traditional steakhouses. But they don’t invalidate or supplant the traditional model. Delmonico’s and American Cut both offer steakhouse dining on the grand scale. Despite the seeming differences between them, they embrace the ethos that steakhouse dining is not just about the steak itself, but about the totality of the experience. </p>
https://ny.eater.com/2015/1/27/7881711/old-versus-new-steakhouses-delmonicos-and-american-cutNick Solares2015-01-26T16:04:19-05:002015-01-26T16:04:19-05:00Old Classic, New Classic: Italian-American Opulence at Bamonte's and Carbone
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/kkBcoeELhzZSW8dgLztKdyYGkgs=/146x0:2520x1781/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/45536674/carbone_tableside.0.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Bill Addison</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>New York's newest iconic red-sauce joint could never have existed without its oldest.</p> <p><img align="right" alt="classics week logo" src="https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3341200/eaterclassicsweek_fade.0.jpg"><i>All this week, as a </i><a href="http://ny.eater.com/classics-week-2015"><i>Classics Week</i></a><i> special, Eater is sending correspondents to classic New York restaurants and their newer counterparts, to see how the two compare. They'll report back on the scene at both, suss out the differences, and maybe even shed some light on what makes the classic a classic. Up first, Eater Features Editor Helen Rosner, with a look at two red sauce Italian restaurants:</i></p>
<p>The story of Italian food in America is, in many ways, a story about the color red. There's the wine, the waiters' jackets, the checkered tablecloths, the cherries punctuating the ends of cannoli, and most of all, there's the sauce. Much of the credit for this redness belongs to the south of Italy: its agricultural and gastronomic embrace of the tomato, for one part; for another, its pervasive poverty and — at the tail end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth — the subsequent flood of emigrants to the United States, who brought their propensity for tomatoes with them.</p>
<p>Among this wave of newcomers was a man called Pasquale Bamonte who left his home in the tiny Campanian town of Felitto and, in 1900, opened up a restaurant on Withers Street in Brooklyn. One hundred and fifteen years later, Bamonte’s is still standing, run by Pasquale's grandson Anthony and great-granddaughter Nicole. The restaurant is a study in scarlet, with oxblood floor tiles in the bar, red carpeting in the dining room, and burgundy walls and ceiling. Evenings are when the dining room is really happening, but the restaurant is open for lunch, and even on afternoons when the sun pours in the (red-draped) windows, there’s a ruddy gloom in the air.</p>
<p> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Bamonte’s" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hNFQp77DFxOQtvfIxj-QVBVOiY8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3343138/bamontes.0.jpg">
<cite>Bill Addison</cite>
</figure>
</p>
<p>The well-worn rug may have been pulled out from under many of the archetypal red-sauce joints from the back half of the previous century (thanks to an increased American interest in culinary regionalism, and a pervasive fascination with the cuisine and culture of Northern Italy that took root in the ‘80s and ‘90s), but sit down at a table in the back of Bamonte’s high-ceilinged dining room, and you’ll stare down a menu that hasn’t changed much since the restaurant was last remodeled sixty years ago.</p>
<p><q class="pullquote float-right">The food at Bamonte's may be classic, but it's not very good.</q></p>
<p>That menu doubles as a primer on Italian-American food, the specific school of gastronomy that came about when those Southern Italian immigrants of a hundred years ago adapted their recipes and techniques to the ingredients available in American markets. <span>Bamonte’s opened its doors early enough in this timeline that some of the dishes the kitchen is known for postdate the restaurant itself, among them clams casino, a preparation invented in Rhode Island in 1917 that involves tomato-sauce-basted littlenecks broiled on the half shell under a cap of crisp bacon.</span></p>
<p>Most of what lands on the table when you visit Bamonte’s involves some variation on that rich tomato gravy. It’s pinkened with cream for the spicy vodka sauce ladled over rigatoni, studded with ground meat for a bolognese that blankets tortellini, and it’s the star performer on a platter of veal parmigiano, shining sweet and acidic and true under a gooey white mantle of cheese.</p>
<p>But let’s not be coy: the food at Bamonte's may be classic, but it's not very good. The pasta is watery, the clams are rubbery, the waiter-recited wine list is a crapshoot most likely to land on a bottle of it'll-do plonk. But at this restaurant — where the ghosts of Frank Sinatra and James Gandolfini drink sambuca alongside a brace of yeah-okay-fine-they’re-probably-mobbed-up regulars at the bar — the food was never what mattered. The point of Bamonte’s is the family, the room, the stories, the blood, the warmth. The <em>soul</em> of the red sauce matters more than the actual sauce itself.</p>
<p>Speaking of red: In physics, there’s a phenomenon known as <em>redshift</em>. An aggressively oversimplified explanation of the concept might be this: the farther away from us something moves, the redder it appears. Objects that are moving towards us are subject to the opposite effect, <em>blueshift</em>, moving along the color spectrum the other way until they’re a brilliant azure. This applies primarily to very big things moving at very high speeds, stars and galaxies and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_law">the universe as a whole</a>. Lately, I’ve started to think that it also applies to restaurants.</p>
<p> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="A blue-walled dining room with white table-clothed tables." data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gIj7PEw7ogJcSP7CxnQ6-0NOiyM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3343124/carbone.0.jpg">
<cite>Daniel Krieger/Eater</cite>
</figure>
</p>
<p>When Carbone opened in the West Village in 2013, it was carefully engineered to feel like it had been there forever. The owners — chefs Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi, and their business partner Jeff Zalaznick — promised that the restaurant would be a time warp to the pinnacle of 1950s Italian-American luxe, an elegant, extravagant midcentury setpiece inspired by exactly the kind of feel Bamonte’s would have had in its heyday. The music is swingy and jazzy. The drinks are stiff. The mood is clubby. The garlic is sizzling. The walls are impossible to ignore: they're painted a rich, saturated, renaissance blue.</p>
<p><q class="pullquote float-right">The soul of the red sauce matters more than the actual sauce itself.</q></p>
<p>The blue walls aren’t the only difference between Carbone and Bamonte’s, but they serve handily as a symbol of their fundamental divergence. Carbone may be meticulous in its references to the classic red sauce joints of yore, but at no point did the restaurant promise fidelity. This is an elevation of the form, not a replication. The hodgepodge of family photos and signed headshots that crowd the walls at Bamonte's are, at Carbone, a millionaire's gallery of contemporary pieces. The salads at Bamonte's are whisked from the refrigerator straight to the table; at Carbone, ordering a caesar salad means a server wheels a cart through the restaurant to your table and composes the whole thing right there for you and all the dining room to see. It's a nod to the salad's origins as a tableside preparation, but with a theatrical Rat Pack flourish that pushes the procedure into the realm of performance.</p>
<p> <figure class="e-image">
<img alt="Carbone Caesar salad" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TO5-2JODZmLCGqcjwwGeLh614D8=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3343106/CarboneCaesar1.0.0.jpg">
</figure>
</p>
<p>In fact, the whole restaurant might veer into the decidedly performative, if it weren't for the fact that the food at Carbone is astonishingly good. The menu draws on the same references as Bamonte's — to the point where the task of ordering an identical meal at both restaurants leaves you a wealth of options — but the recipes couldn't be more different. Carbone's clams casino are tender and smoky, finished not with bacon but with a melting, translucent rectangle of lardo. The rigatoni alla vodka is a study in thoughtful contrasts: silky sauce and springy pasta, sweet tomato and fiery chili. The veal parmesan is thick-cut, tender, and ambitiously portioned; it's doused in a note-perfect tomato gravy and a layer of blistered, melty cheese so rich it threatens to puddle into butter. Even the pork chop with peppers — a reverent if unsubtle nod to the pork chop alla Bamonte famously served across the East River — is a masterpiece, a hunk of arrestingly flavorful meat draped in a velvety coat of red and yellow peppers that play a deep, sweet counterpoint to the chop's spiced and charred exterior.</p>
<p><q class="pullquote float-right">If Bamonte's is the immigrant kid made good, Carbone is the movie star playing him. </q></p>
<p>It is, in short, a production. If Bamonte's is the immigrant kid made good, Carbone is the movie star playing him in the inspiring Hollywood adaptation, all chiseled jaw and poreless brow. Sure, the accent is right and the costumes are Oscar-worthy, but it's not <em>quite</em> reality. It's a little brighter, a little more saturated, just a little bit more gorgeous than should be believable. The blue walls are part of this: they're the precise shade against which the waiters stand out most vividly in their sharply tailored maroon tuxedos; against the ultramarine of the walls, the red sauce on the meatballs dazzles like fire. This is no accident: last April, when Torrisi and Carbone cooked a menu of Carbone's greatest hits for a fundraising dinner in Beverly Hills, they painted their one-night-only dining room the exact same color as the walls in New York.</p>
<p>Back to the oversimplified physics, though: Older things, slower things, and things with less energy are red. Faster, more powerful, younger, more aggressive things are blue. But these assignments aren't static. The red and blue shifts are along a spectrum — it all depends on the relative vantage point from which we observe. We move around, things move around, they look redder, they look bluer. The history of Italian-American restaurants in New York is ongoing; the food, the drinks, the decor, the music, the ebulliently mafioso mood — all of it is an evolving story, one that starts with nineteenth-century immigrants and leads, so far, to house-infused fig grappa and a $55 veal parm. Carbone could never have existed without Bamonte's. In some ways, taking the long view of the layered legacy of Italian food in America, they're the same restaurant seen from different sides, different places on this spectrum of old and young, looking back and looking forward. Bamonte's is red to its very soul, and — at least from where we're standing right now — Carbone is blue.</p>
https://ny.eater.com/2015/1/26/7894637/old-classic-new-classic-italian-american-opulence-at-bamontes-andHelen Rosner