Where Colin Ate: Cross-Country Edition
Our columnist dines out in four different cities: Chicago, New Orleans, Aspen, and New York
Colin Camac (aka @resyguynyc) leads restaurant partnerships at Blackbird and 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.
It has been a wild last month since I last filed, with a ton of fun work travel. The end of last month began with a quick jaunt to New Orleans, followed by Chicago, and finally Aspen over a 4-week span. I ended up at parties, mixing with some of the most respected people in the restaurant industry from around the country. As exhausting as the last few weeks have been, it's been great to have the opportunity to share a room/meal with so many people I’ve admired. Here are a few bites I’ve had in NYC and on each of my recent trips.
Chicago
Boka
📍Lincoln Park
🍽️ Modern American
I was in town for the James Beard Awards and really only had time for one dinner, so I decided to check out a classic. Boka Restaurant is the first restaurant from Boka Group that now has restaurants all over the country. The only other time I was there was a drink at the bar before dinner at Alinea 12 or so years back, and without even knowing what it was, I noted how nice the bar experience was. My good friend Sarah works for the company, so they were able to sneak us in for some last-minute seats on a very busy Sunday night. We went à la carte, and the meal was fantastic, ending with a course featuring both chicken and duck, apparently both of Chef Lee Wolen's specialties. I would definitely recommend checking it out and giving a nearly 25-year-old restaurant some love.
Skyscrapers
📍Chicago O’Hare International Airport
🍽️ Fast Food
Hot take: The Chicago dog at Skyscrapers inside O’Hare may be the best I have had recently in the city. Definitely worth a stop at this tiny bar on your way out of town.
New Orleans
S.Pellegrino Presents 777: A New Orleans Feast
📍Garden District
🍽️ New Orleans
My good friend Anna helps put together this dinner in honor of the North America 50 Best List, with 7 chefs from around the country cooking together for one night only. This year, the event was hosted by Jack Rose in the Pontchartrain Hotel, and the chefs included Gabriel Kreuther, Aisha Ibrahim, Fariyal Abdullahi, and Jon Yao, among others. It was a really fun meal that culminated in an epic dance off with the 610 Stompers (look them up).
Li’l Dizzy’s Cafe
📍Tremé
🍽️ Creole Soul Food
Directly after a really fun crawfish boil thrown by OpenTable, I ran into my friends from Beba (Montreal), who highly recommended checking out Li’l Dizzy’s for some classic New Orleans fare. Li’l Dizzy’s is a smallish order at the counter two-story restaurant in a house that serves bayou staples. I absolutely loved the fried chicken, mac & cheese, and collards, but for me, it was the gumbo, which was one of the best versions I’ve had.
Gonzo’s Smokehouse
📍Luling
🍽️ Barbecue
I met up with my good friend Joe, who lives down here, and he took me to a spot off the beaten path I definitely would not have found on my own. Located about 30 minutes outside of town, Gonzo’s BBQ is open 2 days a week and sells out early. Gonzo’s does Texas-style BBQ, and although they were out of a few things I wanted to try, the brisket was top-notch, and their homemade sausage, studded with bits of cheese, was a great bite.
Parkway Bakery & Tavern
📍Mid-City
🍽️ Po’boys
When in New Orleans, you need at least one po' boy, and for this trip, I wanted to try one of the classics that I had not yet been to. Parkway is always at the top of many lists, so I decided to pop over and give it a try. I normally love the seafood poboys, but for this visit I decided to go best of both worlds and get one named after the “hardest working man in show business” himself, James Brown. This monster of a sandwich was layered with BBQ beef, fried shrimp, pepper jack cheese, and topped with hot sauce mayo. It was as gloriously delicious and messy as it sounds.
Porgy’s Seafood Market
📍Mid-City
🍽️ Seafood
Porgy’s was a total surprise and a place I had never heard of before. I went to check it out with my friends Drew & Alex from Resy. Porgy’s is a small seafood market and restaurant with a great seafood-centered menu. The Sicilian sashimi was classic but featured some fun fish, like sheephead, which you don’t normally see in NYC. We ordered a really deeply flavored BBQ shrimp swimming in a sauce heavy with Worcestershire, which was really tasty. The best bite, possibly of the trip though, was something called the “All Coast’s Tostada”, which was a ceviche with Thai flavors, crab boil aioli, naam jim sauce, and herbs. It was spicy, salty, and acidic all at once over the backbone of that delicious aioli. Really a perfect bite.
Aspen
Matsuhisa
📍Downtown
🍽️ Japanese
In town for Food & Wine Aspen, the Blackbird team and I decided to go somewhere fun for our first night in town and settled on Matsuhisa. I personally had never been to a Matsuhisa location (the original in LA spawned the Nobu restaurants worldwide), but one of my earliest memories of being wowed by a meal was dining at the original Nobu shortly after it opened as a present for my 5th-grade graduation. One of the dishes that I remembered most fondly was the tuna miso chip that my dad and I would both start and finish each meal with. No longer on the menu at either Nobu in NYC, I was excited to give it a try after so many years, and it was still a really fun bite. For a place like this, it is always best to stick to the classics: yellowtail jalapeno, “new style” sashimi, white fish with dry miso, creamy spicy rock shrimp tempura, and miso black cod. I even ordered another tuna miso chip for dessert, for old times’ sake.
White House Tavern
📍Downtown
🍽️ Pub fare
White House Tavern is the local version of Hillstone/Houston's, etc., but one of the smaller locations that specializes in their apps and sandwiches. I ended up grabbing lunch with some of the team from Sip & Guzzle, who we brought out there for an event later that evening. Hillstone remains undefeated in the high-end chain game. The food is better than it needs to be, and the service is always really solid. Is it going to blow you away on any real level? Probably not, but keeping the standard so consistent from place to place is a feat in and of itself
New York City
Noury
📍SoHo
🍽️ Japanese izakaya
Blackbird Club hosted a friends & family preview of soon to open Noury, the follow-up to the criminally under the radar Kiko a few blocks away. Noury is a wine and sake bar with a Japanese-leaning food menu. This was one of the best friends and family dinners I have been to, and I can’t wait to see it at full tilt. Highlights for me were the sashimi, tuna tartare, unagi & ankimo handroll, chrysanthemum salad, and an incredible tuna belly.
Or’esh
📍SoHo
🍽️ Mediterranean
Or’esh is the newest hype-train restaurant from Catch Hospitality and continues their trend of creating impossible-to-get-into restaurants that finally have food that lives up to all the hype. The restaurant is helmed by Chef Nadav Greenberg, formerly of Shmone, where he earned a Michelin Star. For me, the must-have dishes were a chicken liver cigar with amba & parsley yogurt and spicy harissa, the Jerusalem bagel with a trio of dips, and the layered salmon with beurre blanc, grilled cabbage, and broccolini.
Somssi
📍Greenwich Village
🍽️ Korean
I popped in opening week to Somssi, a brand new restaurant from Ahris Kim and backed by the Atomix group. I think this place shows a ton of promise, and I really enjoyed my early meal here. Unfortunately, they were out of the limited mutton chops by the time I arrived, but the rest of the menu helped ease the disappointment. I highly recommend the tuna, served over crushed peas and goat curd. The peas and curd had a great earthiness and acidity (with the help of some lemon) that worked perfectly with the cubed tuna. Ox tongue grilled perfectly was another really good bite, over a romesco sauce and served with a small bit of wasabi. Definitely worth saving room for dessert as the nutmeg tart was the big winner for me, almost reminiscent of a pumpkin pie but with a more liquid custard interior.
Adda: Butter Chicken Experience
📍East Village
🍽️ Indian
With reservations booked out weeks in advance, I was finally able to get a group together with the help of my buddy Evan to do the Butter Chicken Experience at Adda, and it was absolutely worth the wait. You are told to order a few dishes to round out the experience, but the butter chicken itself was the real star. The chef first leaves a paint-can smoker on your table while the chickens finish smoking, then returns with a cart of all your finishing options. You get to choose a base between three butters, and then each guest gets to choose their finishing butter as well. Each guest gets a small bowl of daal (topped with butter), rice, and some paratha to dip. The whole thing is really interactive and one of the more delicious large-format dishes I have had in a long time. I can’t wait to go back and do it again.
Phê
📍Lower East Side
🍽️ Vietnamese Coffee Bar
Phê is the new coffee bar from the team behind Mam, located right next door. The place will soon have banh mi available during the week, but for now, they are kicking everything off with banh mi chao, which is like a Vietnamese steak and eggs. Each guest gets a perfect housemade roll and a sizzling platter of steak, eggs, Vietnamese ham, sausages, and a triangle of Laughing Cow cheese, along with bright yellow mayo and pate. It was one of the most satisfying weekend lunch options I have had in a while, and the bread was absolutely perfect for sopping up all the juices while staying crispy on the outside.
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