Critical acclaim and blogosphere acceptance doesn’t come easy in Midtown, but Beacon’s wood burning oven separates it from the majority of the cookie cutter garbage that lines 56th street. We pass on reviewing a lot of restaurants in these parts, mostly because average filler doesn’t necessarily deserve to be ripped apart, and certainly doesn’t warrant praise either. The Beacon is deserving of an Infatuation write-up though, it’s a reliable option that’s got enough flair among a sea of stuffy restaurants and suits to stand out in the crowd. While Beacon isn’t a restaurant on par with our favorite downtown haunts, it’s definitely towards the top of our list near the office. Working late and need a burger/beer break? Grab a stool at the bar and get to business. There’s an all day happy hour at the bar, everyday starting noon: two cocktails, beer or wine with a burger or pizza for $19.95. That’s a solid deal. As you might expect, aside from the bar deal and their new lunch takeout window ($10 burgers), prices are steep. One can only imagine what rent is on this enormous, double-decker space. Thankfully, unlike many of its overpriced neighbors, the food is actually worthy of your currency. You really can’t go wrong with anything from the Open Fire Specialties appetizer menu. Are we getting in a cab and heading uptown just to eat at Beacon? Absolutely not. Is it worth a trip if you’re stuck in Midtown too much? Absolutely.
Restaurants like Torrisi are the reason that we spend all of our free time eating and writing about food. If you enjoy consuming as much as we do and aren’t held down by underdeveloped taste buds, allergies or religious beliefs, you’re going to love Torrisi Italian Specialties.
By day, Torrisi is the best new sandwich shop in Manhattan. Eat in or take out a gangster roast turkey or chicken parm. At night, all twenty seats are available for $50 a pop, at one of three frustratingly tough to attain prix fixe seatings: 6pm, 7:45pm and 9:30pm. The catch is, there are no reservations. The restaurant opens at 6:00, and it’s first come, first serve. People start lining up to stake their claim on a seating around 5:30. If someone in your party can get there early, you’ll have the pick of the litter. But by 6:30, it’s not uncommon for the restaurant to be sold out for the night. You can always roll the dice and do a drive by – just be prepared for rejection. Luckily, Nolita is stacked and you can always try your luck at Public, Peasant, Cafe Gitane or Café Habana if you can’t get in. We’d been trying to get here for a while now, but it’s a hard place to plan for unless getting out of work early isn’t a problem and your night is wide open.
If you’re lucky enough to score a seat, your only choice will be between two entrees, usually a fish and a meat, and which bottle of fairly priced wine to pair with it. Other than that, your fate is in the hands of the kitchen. Four small appetizers arrive at the table, one at a time, followed by a pasta, main and dessert. It sounds like a lot, but really, it’s the perfect amount of food. The service is excellent, food outstanding and overall experience truly unique. In theory, a prix fixe dinner at a low key Italian sandwich shop might not seem like something to get in line for, but trust us, it is. It’s all worth it.
I made a pact with my arteries the other day. Basically, we agreed that I would eat nothing but steel cut oats and raw carrots for the next six months to atone for what I did to them at The Commodore last week. In return, they agreed to let me off the hook for putting butter on my fried chicken.
In case you aren’t yet familiar, The Commodore is a new Williamsburg restaurant opened by Pies ‘n’ Thighs alum Stephen Tanner, and it’s bad for you. Bad because merely looking at the food here will jack up your cholesterol thirty points, and worse because everything is so good that you’ll crave it all the time. Eventually you too will be cutting imaginary deals with your organs to justify frequent visits. But before you ask the bartender to crush up some Lipitor into your frozen mojito, there are a few drawbacks you should be aware of. Ordering food can be kind of a pain in the ass, and finding somewhere in the place to eat it is another challenge entirely. There is no hostess, so basically it’s a free for all between you and all of Williamsburg for one of the few tables. Off-peak hours are your best bet for grubbing with minimal annoyance. If must go during prime time, we recommend circling the bar until a spot opens up there. That way you can order your eats from the bartender rather than the kitchen window, and suck back a few Commodores (piña colada with an amaretto float) while you wait. Those things are dangerous. So much so that I have now entered into negotiations with my liver. Let’s make a deal.
Music festivals these days are big business, loaded with good bands and now, all kinds of good eats. In advance of this years Outside Lands Music, Food, Wine & Art Festival in San Francisco (8/14-15 at Golden Gate Park in SF feat. Kings of Leon, The Strokes, My Morning Jacket), we decided to give some Friday Fives facetime to a good friend and fellow music and food enthusiast, Superfly Productions principal, Kerry Black.
Black and his team curate festivals like Bonarroo & Outside Lands. You want All Access passes? Black is the guy you need to know. We tried to convince Superfly to sponsor an Infatuation party plane to SF for Outside Lands for us and all our friends (you). Didn’t happen. Maybe next year.
OK. We have to admit that this review was a hard one to write. Not because we’re conflicted about the food here, and not because we couldn’t think of something crafty to say about the place. It’s because we can’t remember sh*t from most of our visits.
The Rusty Knot is not a place for normal dinner time. This is a bar, and a dirty one at that. A kitschy nautical theme and devastating drinks make up the DNA of this place, and it just so happens that they serve amazing bar food that will save your life at 1:00am. Not that the killer food was an accident – Ken Friedman (Spotted Pig, Breslin, music biz) is a partner, and he seems to have a pretty good handle on what makes hungry drunk people happy. Our visits to the Rusty Knot usually follow the same pattern: night out at restaurant turns into extra drinks, extra drinks happen at the Spotted Pig, Spotted Pig makes us hungry for some food and more action…and then we’re sitting on the floor at Rusty Knot eating pretzel dogs and tacos. God bless this city.
