Where Colin Ate: Strange Delight, Oma Grassa, Bar Goto Niban, 8282
The next best pizza spot in the city. Plus: secret supper clubs and home-cooked meals
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.
A little of this, a little of that, and even some home cooking from last week's meals. I found what I think is a pizza spot not enough people are talking about, a few pop-ups, and a couple of old favorites, including another secret dining club.
Colin
Strange Delight
📍Brooklyn
🍽️ New Orleans
Last Monday, a dining club (The Hellfire Club) of distinguished gentlemen that I am a part of - yes, another dining club- got together for our quarterly meeting, this time at Strange Delight. We took over the back room and had a set menu. As I was just here recently, I don’t need to go too deep here, but Strange Delight is ideal for group dining. We started with seafood towers, which included oysters, shrimp cocktail, smoked fish dip, and shrimp remoulade. The fried saltines served on the side were great with the fish dip, and all of the shellfish were nicely shucked. Again, one of the sleeper hits on the menu here is the mirliton som tom, which hits in all the right ways and is a great version of the dish, not just for a non-Thai restaurant, but for anywhere. We followed that with the shrimp loaf, which is always a fan favorite, and ended with perfectly cooked blackened swordfish belly with a Creole mustard cream sauce and watercress salad.
Oma Grassa
📍Brooklyn
🍽️ Pizza
I found out a friend of mine, who also happens to be a really great chef (Silent Mike), has been working at a pizza spot near Barclays, so we decided to check it out after the nearby Bar Goto Niban pop-up (more on that later). My friend had already come a few times and said the pizza is secretly one of the best spots in the city. Honestly, I can’t disagree. The dough goes through something like a 48-hour fermentation process, which helps to create some really impressive pies. We started out with one of the three options other than pizza on the menu, the simply named “lettuces” which was a blend of crunchy leaves with fennel, covered in a herby vinaigrette and topped with piave cheese. Then we hit 3 of the pizzas, starting with an anchovy red pie, dotted with capers and grana padano as well as a long anchovy across each slice. The first thing you taste is the brightness of the tomato sauce, salty anchovies, and then followed by the slightly nutty, sour aftertaste of the crispy crust. I knew we were on the right track after the first bite. We followed that with a great pepperoni pie, oil lightly pooling in the “roni cups,” seasoning itself as you ate. My favorite of the night was the broccoli pie, topped with bacon, mozz, chilies, garlic, and pecorino. Yeah, it’s a bit busy, but all the ingredients hit the right notes, and it was exactly what I was looking for this evening. Definitely worth a visit to this gem, hidden in plain sight.
8282
📍LES
🍽️ Korean
It had been a long time since I made it to 8282, a really fun little Korean restaurant in the former home of the original Meatball Shop on the LES. I bumped into Jee, one of the owners, last week at Nudibranch, and when I found myself in the area after meeting some friends for a couple of drinks, it was the perfect opportunity to come back. I got started with a really good milk punch from their menu, made with gin, white rum, tea liqueur, and champagne vinegar. I was dining solo and definitely overordered, but I started out with the boneless KFC, which was much larger than I expected and arrived in a sticky garlicky sauce and topped with some pickled chilies for a bit of tang. The chicken was impossibly juicy, and I finished every bite even though I was planning to save room for the rest. I followed that with the soy-cured shrimp, with lemon aioli, crispy bread that was a great change of pace from the previous dish, and acted as a delicious mid-course. The kitchen also sent me out a black seabass sashimi with perilla leaf, daikon, and green apple, which tied the whole thing together with its acidic, slightly sour bite. I was also able to try a unique jjajang bori-bap, which was made with shrimp and scallops in a thick black bean and truffle sauce over barley. It was a wonderfully soul food-style dish. My favorite dish of the night, though, was the perilla oil pasta, which was full of umami in a soy and perilla oil broth topped with a beautifully cooked piece of gently seared branzino. The angel hair pasta acted as a perfect noodle to slurp up the broth.
Quick Hits, Pop-ups & New Openings
Bar Goto Niban
📍Brooklyn
🍽️ Japanese
When one of my favorite chefs decides to pop up at one of my favorite bars, I make it my business to go. Last Tuesday, Chef TJ Steele from Claro presented a Japanese-Mexican hybrid menu at Kenta Goto’s Bar Goto Niban in Park Slope. The whole event was sponsored by Iichiko Shochu and featured some awesome shochu cocktails from the Bar Goto team. I started - as I normally do- with the martini variation made with iichiko, aged sake, and a pickled shallot. It was bracingly cold and hit all the martini notes I was looking for. The added brine of the shallot paired nicely with the blend of booze. For the menu, a friend and I ordered all of the savory dishes, and they were all really tasty. We started with a Mexican play on spicy tuna served on a chicharron with Kewpie mayo and chili oil. It was crunchy and very Mexican-leaning for something that is normally a maki roll. The Molotes (fried plantain pocket) with crab were essentially a California roll filled with crab salad and topped with avocado and the Japanese spice blend shichimi. My favorite bite of the night, though, was the shrimp taco, which I initially tried at the Claro Cinco de Mayo party last month and is one of the best tacos around.
Té Company (Home Cooking)
📍West Village
🍽️ Teahouse
As I spoke about in our last edition, I have been a huge fan of Té Company since they opened years ago in my old building in the West Village. Since then, I have remained friendly with the owners, Frederico & Elena. The thing I miss most about the OG version is when Fred “cooked” more savory food in the shop. Fred remains one of my favorite chefs. He has a talent for making simple food taste revelatory and has a knack for seasoning everything absolutely perfectly. If you haven’t seen any of his cooking videos online, they are definitely worth checking out with a fun blend of humor, skill, and quirky editing that perfectly reflects both of them. After trying to schedule a time to hang out for what feels like an obscene amount of time, we were finally able to get a dinner on the books for me to come by their place for a home-cooked meal. We started off with a nice selection of meats and cheeses and caught up a bit over a bottle of wine I grabbed from a local spot (Terry’s) which was a listan negro rosado from Los Bermejos in the Canary Islands. Fred cooked us the most delicious and rustic tagliatelle with chanterelles and chicken liver. The sauce was full of depth from two types of port, used to deglaze the pan, as well as the crushed livers and mushrooms. Elena made a really great salad of lettuces with radicchio, onions, and shaved Parm topped with a citrusy vinaigrette made with the vinegar of their housemade pickles. Some bitter greens were served on the side to round out the meal. It was a really perfect evening.
Happier Apartment
📍Soho
🍽️ American
I went to a pop-up from Chef Devonn Charles Francis at Apartment, the private dining space for Happier Grocery. The food was Caribbean with some really unique preparations and fun dishes. The evening starts as everyone arrives at the Apartment and can order a few drinks from the small bar before getting seated and ready for the meal. The highlights for me were the grilled lamb with chayote bara, which came as chunks of lamb served with a fried bread that you can use as a vehicle for the meat, with a clotted cream and hibiscus chutney. It was really good with the gamy lamb playing beautifully with the sour chutney and cream. I also really enjoyed the “southern Jamaican style rundown,” which turned out to be fried catfish with a rundown style stew on the side, topped with peas that worked really well together. Really fun event and a great chance to try some food from a chef I didn’t previously know much about.
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Great recommendations! Looks amazing. Would you recommend any for solo diners perhaps?
I haven't tried any of the food from Bar Goto yet (usually stick to cocktails) so this is nice to know.