Santo Taco has moved into (a part of) the La Esquina house.
Illustration: Naomi Otsu
Welcome to Grub Avenue’s rundown of restaurant suggestions that goals to reply the endlessly recurring query: The place ought to we go? These are the spots that our meals staff thinks everybody ought to go to, for any purpose (a brand new chef, the arrival of an thrilling dish, or perhaps there’s a gap that’s flown too far below the radar). This month: New tacos! New momos! And new hen parm that’s much more fascinating than it sounds.
Darjeeling Kitchen & Cafe (Lengthy Island Metropolis)
Historically talking, Lengthy Island Metropolis has by no means been a vacation spot on the Queens momo map. That’s now modified due to Darjeeling Kitchen & Cafe, opened by the chef Pupu Chhangi and her niece, Tsering Dolkar, in a captivating house with radiantly gold partitions, a shrine to the Dalai Lama, and an encased mannequin Darjeeling practice. Conventional Tibetan music performs whereas tables tear into tingmo, the steamed bread. Steamed, potatoes are lower in half, wearing spicy tomato sauce with cumin, and showered with fried chickpea noodles. A server described the jhol momo as “Nepalese-inspired”: the sesame-based sauce is made creamier and nuttier than ordinary with cashews. Then there may be the cheese soup, a must-order: Marketed on the menu as “a standard Sherpa soup … usually eaten on the best way as much as Everest,” it’s right here made with sticky, stretchy fufu in a tomato and blue cheese broth. A little bit of chile retains the blue’s funk in verify. —Chris Crowley
All of Our Picks, Mapped
Jr & Son (Williamsburg)
What at first appears like one other cozy, booth-filled red-sauce-revivalist undertaking (this one from the folks behind the Kellogg’s Diner reboot) however provides some welcome surprises: The hen parm, for instance, is laced with Calabrian chile and is so unexpectedly spicy {that a} group who overheard me speaking about it exterior got here as much as agree. Arancini salad provides a lighter tackle the standard appetizer, lined in herbs and served over some radicchio. At dessert, tiramisu skews “citrus” greater than “espresso,” infused with orange liqueur and closely sprinkled with some zest. —Zach Schiffman
Soda Membership (East Village)
All of us have that vegan good friend — let’s name mine J. When she got here into city from the West Coast not too long ago, I assumed we owed her higher than the same old aglio e olio on the otherwise-carnivore menu, so it was off to Soda Membership, not too long ago relocated from Avenue B to Avenue A. Soda Membership is a part of Ravi Derossi’s plant-based Overthrow Hospitality group, which additionally contains the mushroom-centric Third Kingdom and Avant Backyard and the “bitters bar” Amor y Amargo (which beforehand occupied the house, and whose staff consulted on the cocktails right here). Soda Membership, regardless of the title might recommend, is a Roman-leaning Italian place and the very best praise I can provide is that it happy the vegan and non-vegan alike. I preferred the spicy little bit of bucatini arrabiata with focaccia crumbs; J. swooned for “cacio e pepe.” I gained’t abandon meat for good anytime quickly, nevertheless it’s all the time good to have one other spot the place I can, often. —Matthew Schneier
Santo Taco (Soho)
“How lengthy was the wait?” requested Santiago Perez whereas taking orders at his new downtown taco store. A brief line of consumers had stretched across the nook — the place a window into the kitchen provides a glimpse of cooks urgent and griddling corn tortillas and a sheet pan of zucchini blossoms — for the reason that midday opening time, nevertheless it had solely taken about quarter-hour to get by. Every little thing occurs rapidly right here: The $5 and $6 tacos are easy, three-bite affairs (crammed with mushrooms, carnitas, steak, pineapple-marinated hen thighs or pork stomach and ribs) and seating is sort of fully on the sidewalk. There’s a little bit bowl of free of charge chicharrones so as to add to the highest of the tacos by the napkins. That is all appropriately: June is the official begin of spend-as-much-time-outside-of-the-office-as-possible season, and lunch right here is an efficient strategy to take part within the time-honored custom of skipping out on work for an hour. Neighborhood traditionalists take word: Regardless of the brand new administration right here, you continue to get to La Esquina’s brasserie by the unmarked door within the again. —Alan Sytsma
Teruko (Chelsea)
An underground Japanese spot has joined the 2022 El Quijote relaunch and the two-year-old Café Chelsea as Resort Chelsea’s latest eating choice. The sprawling downstairs house was beforehand a nightclub, and the restaurant has managed to channel a number of the traditionally raucous vitality with an already-packed home, although intimate conversations can nonetheless be had within the extra secluded nook tables and cubicles across the perimeter. Diners squint at their menus below spotlit summary landscapes by the restaurant’s namesake, Japanese Swiss artist Teruko Yokoi, who lived in Resort Chelsea with then-husband Sam Francis within the ’50s. Dozens of bottles of Japanese whiskey neatly define the bar up entrance the place combined drinks, just like the “million-dollar cocktail” — a pineapple, tomato, and yuzu bitter — are ready with precision worthy of the intricate glassware. At a counter within the eating room, three sushi cooks in white coats and black ties put together a seemingly simple menu of sashimi and maki that reveals its specialty with twists like smoked radish in a toro roll, offering some chew that prolongs the chunk on delicate tuna stomach, and a house-seasoned soy sauce with light salinity. Right here “crispy rice” takes the type of tartare combined with slippery grated mountain yam on ice, served with a aspect of truly crunchy rice crackers. The kitchen is reliable with mild, but gratifying, tempura batter, whether or not it coats two halves of a meaty spiny-lobster tail or maitake mushrooms. Earthy batons of fried burdock with powdered seaweed don’t crunch in any respect however are a slow-eating, satisfying snack that you just gained’t discover wherever else. Whether or not you choose to complete with a $90 wedge of air-freighted musk melon is as much as you. —Tammie Teclemariam
See All
