Where Colin Ate: Lei, Pitt's, Hutong, King
Plus: Fatty Crab returns and our columnist mixes a mean cocktail
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.
Last week was a fun week of dining with some absolute highlights, but the most fun for me was the nostalgia of having Eater and Punch bring back Fatty Crab for a one-night-only party in honor of Eater’s (and what would have been Fatty’s) 20th anniversary. The event was an industry-only, late-night, after-party and ended up being a great time seeing old friends and eating some food I never thought I’d have again. I invited a few old employees who were still in touch, as well as helped wrangle one of our old Chefs (Chaz Brown) to do the food. We put together a menu that had a bunch of the hits and could be fairly easily executed for a large group (pork/veggie buns, watermelon pickle & crispy pork skewers, beef rendang, chili crab toast), and it ended up being so fun. Was the food perfectly executed and exactly as I remembered? In a setting like this, definitely not, but it was close enough, and the party was an absolute blast. I couldn’t be more grateful to Chaz for making it all happen with a random team of helping hands and really pulling it off. Happy to have had one more night in the Fatty world.
Colin
Lei
📍 Chinatown
🍽️ Wine bar
Last week I tried one of the best new restaurants in NYC. Lei, although billed as a “wine bar,” is very much a small restaurant and serves some of the most fun food around. I had been hearing for a while now that I needed to get over there, and it totally exceeded my expectations. The space is very small, with somewhere around 25 seats or so, with a small bar that seats just two. While the menu is a modest 12 items, everything I tried really stood out. A friend and I started with the Chinese omelette with aged jade radish and scallion oil. The omelette cooked like a tortilla española, but slightly harder and had a bit of funk from the radish, but was mostly flavored with the incredibly fragrant oil. Celtuce served chilled on a plate, alternating with kombu jelly in a red vinegar sauce and topped with fried shallots, was the bite that let us know we were in for a special meal. Deceptively simple-looking but so exciting to eat. We followed that with the fried Montauk whiting, lightly coated and dusted with Tai Tiao seaweed powder, and garnished with lemon. Crispy and nicely cooked on the inside, the powder adds more depth and umami, rounding it all out. A chrysanthemum salad came out next and was perfect after a few fried fish bites, topped with fried burdock for added texture. The sesame shao bing was a must-order, sesame bing that was served warm and somehow filled with salty butter on the inside, which was still a bit cool. The bing came cut in half and was a really memorable bite, and fun to eat with the “Dali” goat’s cheese. The cheese had the texture of halloumi and came with a small dusting of five-spice on the side to garnish it. Soft shell crab with wax beans and an aji dulce pepper sauce, reminiscent of a slightly sweeter chili crab sauce, was always going to be a winner, and this one delivered. The absolute best bite of the night, though, and the dish I will be thinking about for a while, was a shallow bowl of handmade cat’s ear noodles with cumin lamb. The lamb stewed down with tomato was bursting with cumin flavor, crunchy bits of celery, and the delicate chew of the orecchiette-like noodle, all came together to be a really spectacular dish. We paired it all with a recommended 2012 Pinto Gris from Domaine Ostertag in Alsace, which stood up well to the variety of dishes we had. Desserts did not disappoint either; the team first sent us out a kiwi shaved ice topped with thinly sliced pluots, which was bright and refreshing. We then finished our meal with a delicious eight treasure rice pudding presented like a mound of sweet sticky rice and topped with sticky toffee sauce tableside. I cannot wait to come back to this absolute gem of a spot.
King
📍 Soho
🍽️ French/Italian
I found myself walking through the neighborhood with no real idea of what I wanted to eat and stumbled into the bar at King. King is a really nice restaurant on the western outskirts of SoHo, co-owned by one of the owners of Lei, so I figured, while I was there, I may as well do the Annie Shi (aforementioned co-owner) tour. At King, she partners with Chefs Jess Shadbolt and Clare de Boer. The menu, heavily inspired by the cuisines of Italy and Southern France, changes daily and is pretty rustic in style. I find King to be at the upper echelon price-wise for a neighborhood spot, but has a warmth and feel that makes it a great place to pop in. Starting with a customary martini that just felt so right after wandering around, I settled into my bar seat and had a really enjoyable solo dinner. Every meal at King starts with a carta di musica, a warm, cracker-like flatbread brushed with rosemary served in a shallow pool of olive oil, all of which sets the tone. I then ordered the whole Boston mackerel, grilled, boned, and butterflied, garnished with mache leaves and horseradish cream on the side. After a generous squirt of lemon, it was everything I wanted it to be, cooked perfectly with a smoky flavor that really works with the oily fish. The pastas are always really solid at King, and the ravioli on this night was just that. Hand-cut ravioli filled with chanterelles and ricotta, garnished with more of the mushrooms on top in thyme and butter sauce, topped with a bit of parm. Each little pouch packed a nice salty, earthy punch. Following the pasta, I went with the half chicken, also beautifully cooked over the grill and garnished with cress leaves and a really bright and herby salsa verde. Alongside the chicken were a side of cocoa beans, cooked down in a vegetable broth and topped with little leaves of floral marjoram. It was a really comforting weeknight meal and feels like exactly what this place is here for.
Pitt’s
📍 Red Hook
🍽️ Southern
It took me entirely too long to finally make it to Pitt’s, but I am really glad that I did. To me, Pitt’s feels like a perfectly done neighborhood restaurant. The food is Southern-leaning and executed really well. It’s the kind of place you could go to several times a week, and I probably would if I lived anywhere near it. The restaurant took over the former Fort Defiance space and really made it their own, with a comfortable double room space with two bars and tons of kitsch. The menu is playful and full of hits. We started with the Gouda pimento cheese dip and the cold confit mussels, both coming with fried saltines. The pimento cheese was salty and creamy and was a great bite. The mussels were massive and served in a small mason jar swimming in a smoky tomato dressing. Both dishes were really tasty. Following the smaller snacks was a cold meatloaf tea sandwich that came as a half sandwich cut into a triangle and dipped in parsley along the outside. The meatloaf itself is a cold, meaty slice of pork belly and liver pate, topped with mayo, dijon, and a pepper relish on the side. Don’t skip it. For large plates, I was particularly impressed with the lamb burger, served with raclette, onions, and pickles, with “comeback sauce” on an English muffin, which is secretly one of the best vessels for burgers. Definitely one of the better burgers I have had recently. The dish that really blew me away, though, was their pancake soufflé, which must be ordered at the start of your meal. The soufflé arrives, and the service team cuts an X into the top before loading it up with some delicious maple syrup and whipped butter on the side. It’s a must-order and a dessert I will definitely be back for the next time I’m in Red Hook. Bonus points for the really fantastic cocktail menu by my friend Ben Hopkins, as well as a thoughtfully curated selection of agave spirits.
Quick hits, Pop-ups & New openings
Hutong
📍 Midtown
🍽️ Chinese
For a friend’s birthday last week, we got together a large group of people for a table at Hutong, a high-end Chinese spot in Midtown East. I really dislike eating in large groups like this as I usually feel it’s hard to get a real sense of the restaurant, and this was kind of one of those experiences. I will say, the Peking duck was delicious, though. I am not sure how much of a difference getting it lit on fire at the table did for the dish, but it was certainly fun to watch.
Weekend Mexican Markets in Sunset Park
📍 Sunset Park
🍽️ Mexican
Sunday morning, my buddy Jan hit me up to see if I wanted to check out some of the weekend markets in Sunset Park for some Mexican food. I invited my most knowledgeable Mexican food expert, Marcela, and we met up with Jan about an hour later in a small lot in Brooklyn, where around eight stands happened to be cranking out some of the best food I’ve had in a while. All of the people working their stands could not have been more generous, offering some extra bites and small things to make sure we tried all of the things that they were most proud of. We first went with some tacos arabes, served on an amazing flour tortilla from a trompo and simply garnished with onions, cilantro, and salsa. The meat was insanely flavorful, and the tortilla was as good as it gets. They also gave us a small sample of their al pastor tacos, which was equally as good. We then went across the market to find a woman who was making some of the most incredible nixtamalized masa dishes I have had. We started with a round of sopes, each topped with different meat (chicken, chorizo, potato, cecina) and salsa, as well as a very salty, funky cheese that brought it all together. They were the highlight of the day for me. She also made a delicious cheese quesadilla with some lettuce, crema, and salsa, which really let the quality of the blue corn tortilla shine. We then ate a few gorditas filled with migajas, which directly translates to “crumbs”, but as it was explained to me, it was the crunchy bits of meat left behind when making carnitas. They were also topped with lettuce, crema, and a salsa of our choosing that was served from old school-looking rabbit vessels in a touch I found particularly endearing. After finishing the gorditas, we walked around the corner to yet another small market with another six vendors selling some more food. For this one, I went with a nice carnitas taco, straight from a bubbling cauldron of pork meat and topped with cilantro, onion, and salsa verde. We washed it all down with a small pint of barbacoa consomé from a barbacoa stall across the way. Honestly, a perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
What Colin Made: Cocktails for a tailgate (Horsefeather)
📍 MetLife Stadium
🍽️ Cocktail
For years now, I have been part of a tailgate for my beloved but beleaguered NY Giants. What started as a larger group of hospitality vets has now morphed into a fun, small tailgate of friends who come to the home Giants games, hang out, and eat/drink before the games. While the food and overall wild experience it was when I first started going in ‘17 isn’t what it used to be (as it is not done by actual working chefs any longer) it is still a great time. One of the traditions I have kept from the older version of the tailgate is to base a cocktail I make off of whatever team we are playing by looking up a famous drink from that city and replicating or riffing on it. For this week, we had the Kansas City Chiefs in town, so I went with the most famous KC cocktail, which is called the Horsefeather. From my quick research, I learned that the Horsefeather is a buck-style cocktail, similar to a Moscow Mule, and is very quick and easy to make for groups. More often than not, I end up making a cocktail for the first time for a large group and have no idea if it is even good or not until I serve the first one.
The Horsefeather cocktail consists of:
1oz Rye
4 dashes of Angostura bitters
4oz ginger beer, I used Fever Tree
Served over Ice
Squeeze the juice of a lemon wedge over the top, leave the wedge in the drink and lightly stir to mix it all together
The drink was a crowd favorite, was great in the heat, and is fun for a BBQ of any type.
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