Where Colin Ate: Chiang Mai Diner, Altro Paradiso, Superiority Burger
Plus: pastry pop-ups and the latest craveable bánh mì
Colin Camac (aka @resyguynyc) is officially Blackbird’s “Strategic Sales Lead,” and unofficially is our resident insider’s insider. He is out, on the town seven nights a week, sniffing out the city’s best joints, skateboard in one hand, martini in the other.
What makes a neighborhood restaurant? This is a question I recently found myself asking (and answering). Is it the location? The accessibility? The everybody-knows-your-name quality? Turns out, for me at least, it's a menu that always has a few tried and true staples. Your favorite neighborhood joint is all about comfort, that's what you come for(!), and there are few things more comforting than knowing you'll be able to tuck into a favorite dish or two without fail. Last week, I found a few such spots in that they served the type of soothing and craveable dishes I always want to come back for, again and again. Read on, then go add them to your rotation.
Colin
Altro Paradiso
📍Soho
🍽️ Italian
“Will you get a fennel salad with me?” was the text I received from a good friend of mine while discussing if we were both available the following evening to catch up. I immediately knew what that meant as she had been talking about craving this specific dish on and off for a few weeks now. Altro Paradiso opened back in 2016 as Ignacio Mattos’ much anticipated follow up to Estela and has quietly kept chugging along as a great neighborhood staple ever since. On this particular evening, I arrived around 6 p.m. and immediately grabbed a few seats at the bar, which is always a great place to sit. The menu has a few classic dishes that never seem to leave, which is the sign of a place looking to be a neighborhood spot. There’s comfort in the fact that you can always come back for that same favorite dish, tonight’s being their fennel salad, aka “finocchio,” which consists of fennel ribbons (duh) over the top (in the Mattos style) hiding a salad of olives and provolone underneath. It really is a satisfying dish. The other bite that caught my eye was the quail, served as half a bird, fried with a simple lemon wedge and zest to garnish. I love little birds — quail, pheasant, all of them. There is something so satisfying about finishing up and leaving a plate full of the tiny bones. Maybe that’s a bit morbid (vegetarians, this one might not be for you), but it’s true. The kitchen then sent us a delicious citrus salad with dates, pistachio, and pecorino that was one of the highlights of the meal for me. I am not usually a citrus salad fan, but this one may have changed that for me. It’s just not something I usually gravitate towards, but it was refreshing and felt right on the unseasonably warm night. For pasta we went for the capellini served with bottarga and dandelion greens which I really enjoyed. Dandelion greens are always a crap shoot at restaurants — when they are not prepared correctly they are pretty gross. In this case, I actually wished there were more on the dish and cut slightly smaller to be better incorporated into the whole thing, not just a few bites. I kept going back in for the salty simple perfection that is bottarga on pasta though. We finished the meal with the simple roasted chicken, with a nicely dressed salad on the plate, pulling the crisp leaves through the chicken jus for maximum flavor.
Superiority Burger
📍East Village
🍽️ Vegetarian
How good can a fry really be? That’s what I thought the first time I heard that Superiority Burger had finally started to make them. I can now report that the fries at SB are pretty incredible. Even as a “I’d rather eat two burgers than a burger and fries” type of guy, I don’t think I could ever come back here again and not order them. The fries now come with the burger and are a perfect specimen with a golden crispy outside and creamy mashed potato texture on the inside. I have been a fan of SB since they opened, always loving the vegan junk food vibe paired with fun salads and sides from whatever was in season from the green market. It’s a great concept and has translated really well into their new, much larger operation. The classic burger, which I got on this visit, was as good as ever. I love that it’s not pretending to be meat, but also still feels like a burger. The burger at the original location was much smaller, with the option to get a “Megamouth,” which was a larger version served on a sesame seed bun. The current version is mega-sized, for sure, but is on a potato bun instead of sesame. I must admit, I miss the old bun, but the burger is as delicious as ever (honestly, besides that one note, it might even be better). The sides I went for were fried brussel sprouts over labne and the classic Japanese sweet potato with pickles and labneh that I feel like I also order on most visits. The other great thing about the new SB is that they have a full and constantly rotating dessert menu that is not to be missed. The desserts here are some of the best in the city, and I physically cannot get myself to leave this restaurant without trying at least one. This time the chocolate, peanut butter, and banana sundae was calling my name and it was one of the best desserts I’ve had in a while. The sundae consists of a scoop each of chocolate, peanut butter, and banana ice cream, topped with caramelized banana sauce (wow!), whip, and a chocolate/peanut crumble. I may need another one today.
Chiang Mai Diner
📍Bushwick
🍽️ Thai
Thai food is something that I regularly crave. The salty, spicy, sour combination of flavors that is the backbone of the cuisine really hits home for me. I’ve been to Thailand twice, and I remember how little I knew about real Thai food (still always learning) at the time, but the food I recently ate at Chiang Mai Diner in Bushwick was really good, especially their Khao soi, which has become one of my favorite Thai dishes. My first bite of it dates back to my first trip to Thailand, which happened to bring me to the mountainous city of Chiang Mai (yes, for which the aforementioned diner is named). While in Chiang Mai during that trip, a chef friend of mine gave me some pretty loose directions to his favorite place, something along the lines of “tell the tuk-tuk driver to take you to X restaurant and then go to the little spot right across the street.” Luckily the directions worked out and I ended up in front of an amazing little spot specializing in Khao soi. I sat down ordering the house special and within minutes a perfect bowl of aromatic and creamy yellow curry with braised chicken over egg noodles and fried noodles on top was sitting in front of me. On the side were pickled mustard greens and raw shallots along with a few limes for a bit of acid. The first bite was an incredible mix of texture and flavor that only seemed to get better as I continued to eat, adding the mustard greens and a ton of the sharp shallots as I went. It was so good I brought my friends back the next day for lunch as well. Which brings me to the other night, when a friend asked me to meet at Chiang Mai Diner — a favorite local spot of hers. The place feels great, and was very reminiscent of a place you’d find in Thailand. The menu is bigger than I expected but we got a few favorites, including: the Khao soi (a really solid version, make sure to ask for them to add some onions or shallots!); Som Tum Plara, which is a green papaya salad with pickled fish sauce that had good flavor but the iceberg underneath just got in the way; Crying Tiger, a beef with roasted rice powder, chili, lime, mint, and onion which was really good; and finally the Sai Oua, a northern-style pork sausage with herbs. While the Khao soi was probably the best dish of the night for me, I found myself continuously going back to the sausage. I love the simplicity of the plating as well as all of the accouterments around the sausage that keeps you coming back in an almost addictive way. Bite the chili, cool it down with the sausage, a little bite of ginger then raw onion and a peanut to finish. It is a really perfect experience that has flavors jumping all over your palate that I really enjoy. I would definitely come back here to check out more of the menu.
Pop-ups and early visits …
Loser’s residency at Jean’s
📍Noho
🍽️ Pastry pop-up
I first met Lizzy Koury way before she became cake-famous with Loser’s and it has been a blast to see how far she has come. We first met right after she moved to the city and was working FOH at Sunny Lee’s Banchan pop-up at the now closed People’s Wine. Loser’s started as a small idea to create dinner parties with friends, cooking things inspired by her Lebanese background. What started small at closed restaurants eventually became a regular pop-up at places like Time Again and now Jean’s. During all this, she also dove head first into being the go-to cake company for the downtown cool kids, incorporating ingredients and flavors such as the now famous potato chips/chocolate, earl grey with honey and pistachio, Aperol spritz etc. Her pop-up now is every Monday at Jean’s and she changes the menu slightly each time. The grape leaves she makes are the best I have had, and on this visit lamb Kofta with pepperoncini yogurt, mint, and pickled celery were the highlights. Although I didn’t order it (because I was dining solo and I’m not a monster), the giant cinnamon roll looked incredible. If it is anything like her cakes, I’m sure it’s also delicious.
Banh Anh-Em
📍East Village
🍽️ Vietnamese
In anticipation of their newest opening in the East Village, the Banh team (UWS) decided to do a few days of preview pop-ups this weekend. Following along online, and seeing a few friends who have been to the preview tastings, I was super excited to try to check this one out. I put my name on the list for the first lunch seating shortly after they opened and waited around for longer than I’d care to share until I received the text to come back. The food was as good as advertised, and I cannot wait until they are fully open to check out more of the menu. I started with their “OG” bánh mì, which was as good a version as I have had in NYC. The sandwich was definitely pate-forward on the perfect bread that almost rips up your mouth with its crunchy exterior, giving way to a pillowy soft inside. The sandwich is stacked with an almost smoky meat consisting of Vietnamese ham, sausage, pork floss, and Maggi soy sauce. I followed that with a torn rice paper salad called Bánh tráng trộn, which included pounded mini dried shrimp, green mango, beef jerky, and chilies all brought together with some Vietnamese mint. The most surprising dish though was called Xôi Khúc, which is a sticky rice mochi ball filled with mung bean and pork belly and topped with fried onion and crushed peanuts that I found hearty and addicting. This place feels like it’s going to be a really exciting new restaurant, and I can’t wait until it finally opens.
NY Kimchi + Golden HOF
📍Midtown
🍽️ Korean
For the follow up to his insanely popular take on diner food at Golden Diner, Chef Samuel Yoo took a look into the past by taking over the lease for NY Kimchi in Rock Center from his parents. That same location is now not one, but two new distinct concepts: Golden HOF is his ode to Korean pubs serving snacky foods like wings, rice cakes, and burgers, while NY Kimchi is a higher end Korean steakhouse-style experience. The restaurant is brand new, and as I get excited about these things I wanted to give it a quick early look. We started upstairs in HOF with a drink at the bustling bar — I think a symptom of the neighborhood is everything slows down right around 8 p.m., which it did just as we were ushered downstairs. The steakhouse space is a mix of regular tables and grill tables — we were at a regular table because we’d decided to dine downstairs on the fly. The food we had was really solid, of which my highlights were a delicious scallop crudo, shrimp cocktail (I’m such a sucker for shrimp cocktail), an awesome version of oysters Rockefeller, kimchi jjigae, and lamb chops. Excited to come back and try the other side as well as the grill experience.