Where Colin Ate: Place des Fêtes, Taqueria El Chato, Kiko, Kabin
Plus: a quick trip to Key West
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, I ended up heading to Key West for several days for my best friend Sarah’s wedding. The party was made up of about 75 percent hospitality people, which led to a really fun event. The wedding also could not have been more perfect and tailored to the people that got married, food was from chefs who work with them in NYC and it was a really fun casual party complete with Chicago hot dogs, stone crab claws, shrimp cocktail, lamb arayes, and chicken fingers which I paired with homemade ranch and the largest tin of caviar I have seen in a while. Such a fun few days and an awesome celebration of two great people. Besides the long weekend trip, I hit a sleeper hit downtown that still isn’t getting enough love, a new fancy French spot, and one of my favorite restaurants in NYC that I need to make a point to get out to more often.
Colin
Kiko
📍 Soho
🍽️ Asian American
After a cocktail party at the Soho bar Kabin, a few friends and I decided to pop across the street and return to Kiko, which I hadn’t been to in a while but is always a really solid meal. As much as I had liked Kiko previously, this was the best meal I have had there from start to finish. Every dish was a hit. We started with the oysters, which were fast, followed by the really fun Dungeness crab, served in its shell with crab fat mayo, rice, avocado, and nori on the side for DIY handrolls. It’s such an enjoyable dish to eat and truly tasty. Next up was their chicory salad, which happens to be my favorite version in the city. It’s addictively crunchy and savory with bitter notes from the chicories as well as tahini. I absolutely love it. The sardine toast is always a hit and definitely plays to my love of tiny silver fish. For the mains, which, unlike most restaurants, are really strong here, we started off with the lobster rice. A tahdig-looking crispy rice topped with shelled lobster meat with a red curry sauce poured over the top tableside. The curry is bright and a touch sweet from coconut, I presume, and really pairs well with the lobster. Next up was a dry-aged, bone-in strip served with a brown butter tare and egg yolk that resembled the normal set for tsukune (Japanese chicken meatballs). It was a great looking dish, and the yolk sauce was great with the nicely crusted steak. We rounded the meal out with the pork secreto served with spicy pineapple on the side that offset the heaviness of the meat. This place has leveled up and is one of the best-kept secrets in NYC, definitely worth checking out.
Le Chêne
📍 West Village
🍽️ French
Le Chêne is a new French restaurant that opened several months back on Carmine Street in the West Village. I waited a few months before giving it a try, as it felt like a really ambitious spot that may need a bit of time to get its legs under it. I’m happy to report that the meal I had was worth the wait. Le Chêne is definitely not an everyday neighborhood restaurant and I don’t think it’s pretending to be. That is exactly why I liked it so much; it felt like a place that knows exactly what it wants to be and is very much priced for a special night out. I sat at the bar solo and had a really delicious meal. I started with two of the bite-sized amuse-bouche section dishes, the first of which was the much-talked-about sweet shrimp tartelette. Chopped sweet shrimp in a small tart with creme fraiche, maple, and covered with a shiso leaf, beautifully cut to cover the contents of the mini shell. The sweet shrimp flavor comes through well and pairs really nicely with the sweetness of the maple and bright herbal note from the shiso. I then went with the cod cheek nugget and caviar. The dish itself is pretty self-explanatory, subbing cod cheeks for the chicken nuggets that are now popular around town. The dish was really tasty, although I do wish the breading held a bit better to the nugget. Following the caviar nuggz, I went with a really bright melon and cucumber salad to have a lighter bite before the massive main course. It was a refreshing dish of fantastic melon, cucumber, and bits of goat cheese sprinkled throughout, offering a bit of creaminess as well as a little standard barnyard funk. Finally, I also ordered the immediately Insta-famous pithiviers, which are large puff pastries filled with a surf & turf of pork farce, smoked eel, and potato gratin. The pastry itself was wonderfully flaky and chewy, giving way to a very savory and smoky, meaty filling. It also arrived with a beet condiment to add some acid and brighten the whole thing up. The beet condiment instantly reminded me a lot of the way the cranberry ketchup served with the M.Wells tortieres or traditional Quebecois meat served around the Holidays worked in the same type of way to lighten up the meaty dish. I thought it was a really great version and would happily order it again with a larger group as it is fairly massive. Even though I fully over-ordered, I went for dessert and decided to go with the chocolate tart, which had a really deep chocolate flavor and was as decadent as it should be.
Place des Fêtes
📍 Clinton Hill
🍽️ Seafood/Wine Bar
Place des Fêtes is one of my favorite restaurants in NYC, and I don’t get there nearly as often as I would like to. I was invited last week to a preview party for the new addition to Sailor a few blocks away, and decided a quick solo bite after the party was the right move. I showed up as a walk-in and was quickly seated at the bar. As a solo diner, I find the top section of the menu (froid/chilled) to be nearly impossible to navigate, as I wanted to order every one of them. I settled on three out of four of the dishes, and they got me started on a really perfect meal. Starting with the classic Bangs Island mussels served stuffed with pickled onion and covered in a foamy, almost verde-like cream made up of parsley and other herbs, such a PDF classic. Following the mussels, I ordered a newer dish of nicely textured squid, cut into little pieces with sungold tomatoes swimming in a really great broth of Thai chilies and sansho tomato water. My favorite of the section is always the sardine toast, butterflied and served over smoked butter with some kosho (Japanese pepper condiment). It’s a briny, creamy bite that is a staple of their menu, and for good reason. From the vegetable section, I chose a really good dish of roasted corn with smoked eel bits topped with bonito flakes to give it a ton of smoky depth. The meatiness of the eel bits made it eat like a one-pot dish, much more than a side. I finished the savory dishes out with a special from their specials board (I miss the fish bits!) of summer beans stewed down with swordfish bacon and dill. It was another delicious plate that finished out the meal nicely. For dessert, I ordered both the melon sorbet and the corn ice cream, which were both great and paired pretty well when eaten together. I need to make it my business to come back more often, as I really do love this place.
Quick hits, Pop-ups & New openings
Sandy’s Café
📍 Key West
🍽️ Cuban
While in Key West, the one place I absolutely needed to try was Sandy’s Café. Sandy’s is a tiny Cuban takeout spot attached to a laundromat serving the best Cuban sandwiches I have ever had. I was instructed by my friend Sarah, who grew up there, to order the Cuban mix sandwich, which is, from what I can tell, a normal Cuban with the addition of mayo, shredduce, and tomato. It is an absolutely perfect sandwich on the most amazing Cuban bread, toasted flat and crispy on the outside. This is the dish I will be thinking about for weeks to come.
Moondog Cafe
📍 Key West
🍽️ Bakery
A friend urged me to check out Moondog Cafe, which is an all-day cafe specializing in breakfast and lunch but with a really great bakery program. I decided uncharacteristically to go just for sweets, as that felt like the thing that would be really special there, and it was a good choice. I started with a guava-cream cheese danish, which was fantastic with a tart guava and a nice chew to the glazed crust. I also tried their carrot cake, which also had cream cheese frosting, and ate less cakey than most I have tried. The flavor was really great, and the texture could not have been more surprising, in a good way.
Tacos Atarantados @ Taqueria El Chato
📍 Greenwich Village
🍽️ Mexican
A friend put me on to a Mexico City taco spot called Tacos Atarantados, which popped up at Taqueria El Chato on MacDougal Street last week, and I made it a point to stop by. I didn’t know much about them before trying, but the tacos were absolutely fantastic. We ordered everything on offer, starting with papas enchiladas, which was a plate of fries, topped with a citrus chile de arbol sauce as well as shaved beef from the trompo on top. It was a great way to start, and the acidic salsa kept you coming back without it feeling too heavy. Next, we got both a taco de trompo on corn and a quesadilla de trompo on flour that were absolutely lights out. We punched it up a bit with the El Chato spicy, bright orange salsa, which gave it just enough spice to feel it. As a surprise gift, the team also sent out an item specific to Atarantados called a cachetada de Gloria, which was a flour tortilla with melted cheese, topped with Gloria brand dulce de leche, melted over.
Kabin
📍 Soho
🍽️ Cocktail Bar
Kabin, a bar that opened last year on the outskirts of SoHo—Hudson Square isn’t a thing—is doing a bit of a rebrand and brought in some real industry pros to revamp the cocktail offerings, and had a relaunch party that I was invited to through a friend. We arrived just as it opened, but pretty soon the room was packed with industry friends, and it ended up being a really fun time. The new menu was done up to look like an in-flight pamphlet, and I ordered their delicious riff on a vesper, but the name of the drink escapes me.