starring SALAD: Park & Sixth Restaurant and Drinkery

RER 7.18.15

It’s funny when a salad is your favorite dish of the meal, especially when you’re gorging on gastropub fare. It happens, and it happened at Park& Sixth Restaurant and Drinkery. You never would’ve guessed that a beet salad would be the star of your show when cheesy pulled pork mac and cheese, succulent scallops with dense risotto, and garlicky oil-drenched chorizo and scrimp sidled up to your table.

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But it was. It was fresh and it was last. And it was beautiful. Sweet ruby beets, velvety in texture and in color, resting on emerald mesculin lettuce, provided a cool kind of warmth with a royal delicacy. Pale pink rings of pickled onion and herbed goat cheese shone like diamonds against the darker richer hues, while the salad glimmered, sparkling with cayenne candied almonds. This was just a salad, but the combination of the flavors from the sweet beets, the spicy nuts and aromatic cheese was magic, only rivaled by the raucous textures and crunch.

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Everything looked just as scrumptious as that broach of a salad, but flavors fell flat, textures were off, and execution was a shadow. The pulled pork mac and cheese, a special for the evening, was hot and melty, just like you like it, but the meat was so sparse in the sea of fluctuating cheese.

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But the two scallops had promise, the sweetness of the sea and salt with a healthy dose of pepper. It was the truffled risotto dotted with wild mushrooms that held back the small starter. The rice was not cooked enough, with dry chewy centers, and the risotto was lacking the creaminess you were expecting.

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Shrimp and chorizo go together, forever, but the oil became spicy almost until you could not bare it. The crunchy bread dulled the heat and softened with the oil, enabling the shrimp and fatty chorizo.

Park & Sixth’s (gastropub) refined renegade menu offers classics with a twist to amp up “dive bar bites,” but the lovely beet salad wove into your memory as those gem tones emanated in the night.

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7.18.15

HudsonRW : Skylark on the Hudson

RER 1.22.14

At $13 for a prix fixe lunch, Skylark on the Hudson treated its customers well for Hudson RestaurantWeek. The restaurant, a self-proclaimed fine diner, combines tables, booths, neon lights, various patterns and large orb lights, to create that diner aesthetic. A wall of windows overlook the Hudson River, making the eatery seem even larger, lighter and more playful.

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Even though the regular menu looked like a jumble, there are a wide variety of elevated diner dishes from familiar sandwiches to hefty salads and fancy main courses. Visually the HudsonRW menu was more straightforward, listing highlights. But each plate had a clean presentation and none of the mess of a traditional diner.

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The crab cake appetizer from the regular menu was tasty, but the fresh buttery popcorn heavily dusted with Old Bay seasoning added something a little different. The popcorn was playful pairing with the sophisticated crab cake. Even the french fries served with the prix fixe corned beef Ruben, were a step above your typical diner fare. These were thick, supple and soft on the inside, with a thin layer of crunch and felt like home away from home.

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However, the chicken quesadilla one of the appetizers on the special menu, did not offer anything different or exciting. It was just a cheesy quesadilla, with a good crunchy texture on the outside and an oozy cheesy and warm barbeque sauce center. It was just large enough to get a taste of the favorite.

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The corned beef Ruben was only half a sandwich for the restaurant week special, but it made an impression. Though the sandwich is a diner classic, the quality of the ingredients made Skylark’s Ruben so much more than a slippery diner specialty. Somehow the ratios were perfect, letting the chewy pink meat of the corned beef shine. The bread was super crunchy not greasy, to counter the melty cheese, the thin layer of tangy sauerkraut and just enough Russian dressing.

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A shrimp scallop provencal on the regular menu offered a deep bowl of wet risotto delicately topped with tender shrimp and scallops. The dish was attractive, rich with the aroma of a beurre blanc and the sea. The seafood flavors seeped into the pool of vegetable risotto below it, creating another dimension and layer for the seemingly straightforward dish.

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The apple strudel, a dessert offering for the lunch prix fixe, came hot, with a tiny orb of ice cream on top of the buttery layers of pastry. While the doughy elements tasted luxurious, it was dense and chewy and the apples were washed out and lackluster.

The dressed up diner definitely has a dense menu which mixing diner favorites with an elevating flourish. Skylark on the Hudson manages to make some of their dishes interesting, either by adding something new and playful or doing the classics super well.

Keep up with all the #HudsonRW adventures and everything in between on facebook, instagram, twitter, yelp and pintrest! Let me know what places you are going to try too!

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1.22.14

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double or NOTHING: McCormick & Schmick's

RER 6.12.13

You know when you sit down at the table, you close your eyes, whisper for good luck, and you see what you want? That's what happened the second time we went to McCormick & Schmick’s at the Harrah’s Resort in Atlantic City. We found dishes we wanted to try right off the bat, so our hopes were high.

While I was in college, a group of friends headed down the hill to McCormick & Schmick’s for a fun happy hour, producing fond memories of appetizers and juicy burgers. It was that experience, which guided us there.

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Our first visit to the restaurant, over a year ago on another excursion to the casino, resulted in major failure. We had no beginner’s luck. I can hardly remember what we got; maybe a New England style clam chowder, which was decent; a pretty little cylinder of avocado, mango and crab meat, which was stunning and mildly delicious. But after those appetizers my mind goes blank, probably as a defense mechanism. I do remember being severely disappointed, an entree being sent back, and overwhelming blandness.

There was nothing good about what we had that time, but I am a firm believer in second chances, so on our most recent trip we tried again, hoping for more success. It was a little better. We ordered less food to try to increase our odds, and limit possibilities for unsavory results.

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The buttermilk fried oysters with a horse radish slaw and what was described as a lemon Tabasco aioli, was our only appetizer. The fried oysters were sweet and crunchy, a little greasy, but the tangy and oniony slaw underneath cut it. Each texture was pronounced and independent, creating a fun play of varied chews and crunches. The flavors, however, were all taken captive by the strong onion taste of the many many green onions floating throughout the slaw. Even the aioli did not help to abet the intensity, as it was dull and almost ruined the texture and flavor of the oysters. Somehow the different elements were fighting too hard against each other and there was some dissonance of flavor, which diminished the potential of the appetizer.

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The entrees were far less interesting. I suppose we were trying to play it safe, keeping up our poker face. I had parmesan crusted flounder, drenched in lemon caper butter, with wax beans and a healthy side of butternut squash risotto. The first couple of bites were like relief; the orzo was cheesy and textured, the fish was crusty and crunchy, the beans were buttery and luxurious. But after a few more bites, I began to feel the weight. All flavors, textures, and delight, were lost to salt and butter. Those two ingredients cloaked everything else and made my stomach turn with the richness. It was difficult to finish, but addictive and damaging.

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The salmon rigatoni with a creamy pesto sauce was no better. It had the same lingering richness of the flounder dish, heavy with cream and lack of flavor variation. Despite the salmon pieces, the bits of asparagus, chunks of artichokes, the only addition, which changed up the texture and taste, was the meaty mushrooms. All other life was drowned out by the too creamy pesto and superfluous cheese. The large rigatoni pasta was cooked well, and the whole dish would have benefitted from a lighter sauce, reminiscent of summer.

We skipped dessert, which is difficult and amazing, but we had learned our lesson with McCormick & Schmick’s, our stakes were too high. I do not think we would eat there again for a full meal. Perhaps in future we can indulge in the fun happy hour specials and deals, but our expectations for that would be lower. I guess you can’t always win!

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6.19.13