A Life Worth Eating

700 East 9th Street, New York, NY, Official Website

I always liked drip coffee. But it wasn’t until last summer that I began to enjoy espresso. I had a revelation sometime last June, at Joe the Art of Coffee, where for the first time my espresso didn’t taste sour or burnt; rather it was subtle and chocolatey with nutty hints of maple syrup. It was outstanding. And since that moment, I’ve become obsessed.

Frankly it wasn’t until more recently that I began to appreciate the tremendous skill involved with extracting espresso. I began pulling espresso daily using my Rancilio Sylvia modified with an Auber Instruments PID kit to help maintain proper brewing temperature. I started pulling some incredible shots, intermixed with some not-so-great ones. The hardest part, I quickly learned, was consistency. There are so many variables (like temperature, pressure, temping pressure, grind size, ambient humidity, and bean age) that turned this into a real science. What makes Ninth Street so impressive is its consistency: rarely have I had a poorly extracted espresso. Their baristi too, are obsessed.

319 Graham Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, Official Website

Warning: what you are about to read and see is not safe for work. If you are in a public place, you may want to wait until in the comfort (and safety) of your own home before proceeding. The following photos are pure culinary pornography.

On the other side of the East River lies a small village known as Williamsburg, rife with flannel shirts, thick-rimmed glasses, beards, attitudes, and now, pretty good pizza.

Being located in Williamsburg affords Motorino a fair amount of space for a restaurant — even outdoor courtyard space. The wood-burning pizza oven in the back is cleverly incased by thick glass to lock in the heat, keeping the dining room cool even in the summertime. The simple yet cosy interior keeps the focus on the pies. I was impressed with how my sun-drenched window table turned into a romantic corner alcove as night fell.

271 Bleecker Street, New York, Official Website

Slowly but surely, New York’s quest for authenticity is improving the quality of pizza in the city. The legends of New York-style pizza: DiFara, Patsy’s, Lombardi’s, Grimaldi’s, are facing a wave of new comers bringing traditional Neopolitan-style pies to the Big Apple. Instead of extra large crispy pies overloaded with mozzarella and globs of olive oil, which make no mistake are still delicious, Neapolitan pies are more restrained: smaller, lighter, elastic, and sparse with cheese and saucing. Fork and knife are required. Unfortunately, there aren’t too many places in the city that serve an authentic Naples pie. Kesté is one of them, and it serves the best.

Roberto Caporuscio, chef and co-owner of Kesté Pizza & Vino, is a pizza master. Chef Caporuscio comes from Pontinia, Italy just over an hour north of Naples, the putative birthplace of pizza. After several years of training in Napoli he ventured to the United States to share this traditional style of pizza without compromise. New York-style pizza wasn’t for him. Despite being the president of the Associazione Pizzaiuoli Napoletani, he is rarely found outside of the kitchen. And if he is, his hands are always covered in white dust. Roberto’s enthusiasm for making the perfect pie can be seen almost immediately by watching his slow precise hands working the dough, his eyes almost never straying from the pie.

240 Central Park South, New York, Official Website

When most New Yorkers think of Italian food, they think of pizza, lasagna, and spaghetti and meatballs: dishes with strong dominantly red sauces. And with good reason. These southern Italian dishes originate where the majority of New York’s Italian immigrants came from. At the turn of the 20th century, New York was the single largest nerve center for Southern Italian immigrants coming over from Naples and Sicily. As a result, Southern Italian cuisine is vastly over-represented in the big apple (which I’m definitely not complaining about). But with this disproportional representation comes the omission of the wonderfully light fish dishes from the coastal cities of Northern Italy.

This is where Marea comes in. As sister restaurant of New York’s other Northern Italian gem, Alto, Marea’s menu is rife with raw seafood. Over half of the menu, in fact. At times some of the plates look Japanese in simplicity and presentation, that is until the golden dab of olive oil shines through.

Marea occupies the former space of San Domenico, which other than perhaps Del Posto, was the most expensive Italian restaurant in the city. In this respect, Chef Michael White’s cuisine is similar: it’s expensive. But the restaurant space has been completely renovated and no longer feels like a scene from CSI Miami. Its reflective hard lacquer surfaces and focused halogen lighting put the food on a well-lit pedestal.

141 Waverly Place, New York, Official Website

Coffee fuels the city that never sleeps. Unfortunately, most of it is terrible. But there are exceptions.

It would be unfair to not give Starbucks tremendous credit for raising awareness of coffee and its many forms; however, most of its products remain heavily sugared and over-diluted with milk, cream, and syrups. It’s become fast-food drinkable dessert. And even assuming that its beans are of decent quality, its computerized machines over-extract them while many of its unskilled “baristas” continue to flip on the milk steamer and walk away to help other customers, leaving the milk burnt and undrinkable. What was once a trendy logo to carry in your hand is now a red flag for poor taste.

However, a better educated coffee-craving public now has higher demands that Starbucks cannot fulfill in its current form. For this new demand, boutique coffee shops have been opening up and thriving. So much so, in fact, that Starbucks has been opening unbranded, clandestine shops with a community feel to trick consumers into thinking they’re local shops. But no matter how hard they try, it will be hard to emulate what’s available at Joe the Art of Coffee on Waverly.