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ALWAYS BE EATING The best things we ate in AprilIs it just us, or does the arrival of spring come with a renewed appetite for just about everything? Last month we treated ourselves to at least a few cakes, a bounty of produce and two terrines. Here’s what was on our plates in April. The salmon at Dimes I can’t tell if this is a hot take or the most lukewarm take of all time, but I think Dimes is underrated! I walked in the other night — funnily, one of the few restaurants in so-called Dimes Square where you can do that — for a maximalist salmon dish. From the bottom, up: Butternut squash purée, a jumble of wild rice, greens and cauliflower, the fish itself balancing on top with a crust of mixed seeds. The whole thing is smothered with a massive glob of green tahini sauce. This salmon has not read the Coco Chanel quote about removing one accessory before leaving the house, and it’s better that way. BECKY HUGHES 49 Canal Street (Orchard Street), Lower East Side, Manhattan Pork terrine at Kato Honestly, I am struggling to choose just one dish from my recent dinner at Kato in downtown Los Angeles — everything I had at the seven-course bar tasting was so bright and delicious, each dish became my favorite as I got to know it. (How often do I feel this way with a tasting menu? Almost never). For the purpose of this exercise, though: The fatty, peppery pork terrine with lettuce leaves to make wraps and many kinds of citrus, was a dream. TEJAL RAO 777 South Alameda Street, Building 1, Suite 114 (East Seventh Street), Los Angeles Foie gras at Estela The ideal way to enjoy foie gras is in very limited quantities. A big, rich terrine always overwhelms my palate! But at Estela the team knows to keep the portioning in check. Cooks infused a little foie into a tiny custard, and topped it off with uni and maple. The dish was no bigger than a golf ball and the liver lent just a touch of sweetness — before the maple and the urchin added their own restrained sugars. It was a $35 starter, just a few luxe bites, and honestly that’s all you need. RYAN SUTTON 47 East Houston Street, First Floor (Mulberry Street), SoHo, Manhattan Blackout cake at Hani’s Bakery and Cafe I ate very well this April, thanks to an epic, multicity family trip to Asia for spring break: There was phenomenal Peking duck in Beijing, a beautiful spring kaiseki in Kyoto, Japan, perfect Korean fried chicken in Seoul and my mom’s Pakistani home cooking in Hong Kong. But I’ve got to give it up to the chocolate blackout cake at Hani’s, which was a special treat for my birthday. What can I say? I’m a Taurus, I like nice things! MAHIRA RIVERS 67 Cooper Square (East 7th Street), East Village, Manhattan English muffin at So Good Coffee It has been lean times for the English muffin. But at So Good Coffee, a newish cafe that I visited last month while searching for breakfast sandwiches, the chubby English muffins are made in house with lots of chives and built into respectable sandwiches with melted cheese and a puck of yellow eggs. I like mine with added bacon, thickly cut and rendered around the edges. LUKE FORTNEY 197 Bleecker Street (MacDougal Street), Greenwich Village, Manhattan Sticky date cake at Common Breads I went to London for a few days last month to celebrate the life of my cousin Samantha, who was a dedicated reader of this newsletter. On the one day I got to be a tourist, I made my way to this Lebanese bakery, stocked up on a bunch of treats and then walked to the Natural History Museum. Later on, when I felt as if I was going to pass out from hunger, this slightly sweet date cake was just the pick-me-up I needed. NIKITA RICHARDSON 110 Buckingham Palace Road (Eccleston Street), London, U.K.
THE BRIEF REVIEW Falansai★★
Perhaps you’ve heard of third-culture cuisine, a style of cooking that emphasizes the experience of growing up in a country other than where the chef’s parents are from. There has been a lot of great writing about the subject — Zaynab Issa’s cookbook, “Third Culture Cooking,” is a fine place to start — but there’s something also compelling about letting the food do the talking. That’s precisely what happens at Falansai, a quiet yet confident Vietnamese Mexican spot in Brooklyn. Just as a brasserie doesn’t explain why it offers steak frites, Falansai believes diners will accept its bánh tráng mè tuna tostada without a tableside monologue. Eric Tran, the chef, layers guacamole and scarlet yellowfin over a sesame rice crisp that’s as large as a rib-eye. It looks like a deconstructed Mexican flag. Tran earned raves for this sort of fusion after he took over Falansai in 2020. In November, he relocated the Bushwick restaurant to a more intimate Greenpoint space decked out with a pressed tinned ceiling, orb light fixtures and a big orange La Marzocco espresso machine that fuels the daytime cafe service. The kitchen doesn’t shy away from strong flavors. Pork sausages sing with tropical notes of lemongrass; wrap them up in lettuce with pickled jalapeños. Duck confit tamales, on the more uneven prix fixe, pack the deeply earthy flavors of good banana leaves. Crispy carnitas top off a bowl of mild, bouncy vermicelli. And braised lamb neck, packed with pastoral funk, sits in a warming bowl of pho. Tear off the fatty ovine flesh and place it into a blue corn tortilla; then, dunk your taco into the broth for a cinnamon-scented, Southeast Asian daydream of birria. Address: 120 Norman Avenue (Eckford Street), Greenpoint, Brooklyn; no phone; falansai.com Recommended Dishes: Silver Bell oysters with green tomato mignonette, Vietnamese tamales, pork noodles, raw tuna crunch, Berkshire pork skewers, spicy red curry with turnip cakes, braised lamb neck with pho broth, chia pudding dessert. Price: À la carte dishes range from $12 (for duck neck tamales) to $35 (for lamb neck with pho spices). The four-course dac biet dinner runs $58 per person. Wheelchair Access: The restaurant has a portable ramp for the front entrance; the restroom is fully accessible. A CORRECTION Last Tuesday’s Brief Review misspelled the surname of one of the co-chefs at Barker. She is Gracie Gardner, not Gardener.
FROM OUR CHIEF CRITICS For a rare taste of Northern Vietnam, try the Paper Bridge
It was kind of a challenge to edit down my list of recommended dishes at the Paper Bridge in Portland, Ore. — there were too many! This is a restaurant devoted to sharing the delights of northern Vietnam with rigor and care, and that means Northern-style phở along with regional dishes that I don’t run into very often in American Vietnamese restaurants. Here was one I consider a must order: Phở chiên phồng, a genius invention of street vendors in Hanoi that involves frying layers of day-old fresh noodle sheets so they puff and crisp, staying gently chewy inside, and then dousing them with a peppery tomato and onion sauce that holds fine slices of beef and tender mustard greens. Read the review →
RESTAURANT AT HOME Bistec a la Yucateca Tacos from Taqueria del SuresteThis being Taco Tuesday and all, it felt appropriate to spotlight this recipe for citrus-marinated steak tacos from Sureste Mexican, now Taqueria del Sureste, a food stall in St. Louis. The chef Alex Henry was inspired by a similar dish, popular along the Yucatán Peninsula, but substituted rib-eye for the usual skirt or flank cuts. See the recipe → Have New York City restaurant questions? Send us a note here. Follow NYT Food on TikTok and NYT Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest.
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