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NYC's culinary landscape is a shifty one. Following food trends and restaurant openings is exhaustive work, sometimes shifting from a passion to near mania. You need to try the dish your favorite food critic lauded, score a table at that chef's latest venture, or just impress the hell out of the gastronomically-inclined woman you're dating.
The conundrum? The more difficult the table is to get, and the more a certain foodstuff is spoke about or scrutinized on social media, the more pressing your need to nab a table becomes. Is it the hype that has you hungry, or legitimate merit?
Hype Eats sets out to investigate just that: is it all smoke, mirrors and heavily-filtered Instagram shots, or is the restaurant legitimately worth your time and hard-earned pesos?
In the spirit of replicating a typical diner's experience (and because we are not food critics; we're just hungry) we've visited each restaurant just once. This month we take on Carbone, All'Onda, Chez Jef, Black Seed Bagels and Café El Presidente. Each spot got just one shot to impress us. Read on to see which were hot spots and which were just hype and mirrors.
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All'Onda
Neighborhood: Union Square
Address: 22 E 13th St.
Website: allondanyc.com
How hard is it to get in?: Difficult. Walk-ins are not accepted, so if you come in without a reservation, the best you can hope for is a spot at the bar.
Wallet stress: High ($17-37)
Get this: Guinea Hen, Lumache
Skip that: Hamachi
Does it live up to the hype?: Hell yes.
If you're welcomed into a restaurant with R. Kelly cooing about coming to his hotel, the chance that you'll leave disappointed is low. Fortunately, the offerings at All'Onda are as good as the R&B selection. I'm seated at the bar, where a warm bartender gives full, attentive service. At her recommendation, I order a basil gimlet. I am not a vodka drinker. I siphon tequila into my veins whenever the opportunity presents itself. But this gimlet smells like a bouquet of fresh basil. It's beautiful too, with three aromatic drops of green basil floating on its surface. It tastes like a spring day.
The plates are equally poetic. Restaurateur Chris Cannon and chef Chris Jaeckle, both Micheal White alums, were inspired by the cuisines of Venice and Japan, an unlikely intersection that often plays out here to brilliant effect. Lightly fried sweetbreads are sprinkled with bonito flakes that undulate like waves, which is as off-putting as it is awe-inspiring. Razor clams are wildly fresh and a sea salt crunch adds textural intrigue. Hamachi marinated with soy and chili is subtle, if uninspiring. The lumache pasta, featuring a soft slow-aged duck ragu and dusting of subtly sweet dark chocolate, though, is nearly transcendent. Guinea hen, too, is wonderful, offering two cuts: a leg that's buttery and tender, slipping off the bone, and a crisp skin that gives way to a moist breast. The olive oil-soaked pound cake, with ricotta cream and basil seeds, is simple and clean, the ideal capstone on a night of decadent cuisine. —Shanté Cosme
Carbone
Neighborhood: Greenwich Village
Address: 181 Thompson St.
Website: carbonenewyork.com
How hard is it to get in?: Difficult. Walk-ins are rarely accepted and reservations usually need to be booked several weeks in advance.
Wallet stress: Very high
Get this: Tortellini al Ragu
Skip that: The cocktails.
Does it live up to the hype?: For the service and decor alone, yes. The food was exceptional (though overpriced).
The Carbone story is well known by now: Mario Batali and Daniel Boulud protégés Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi, along with restaurateur Jeff Zalaznick, decide to reimagine the red sauce italian spot for Lower Manhattan. The menu is what you'd have found in Italian Williamsburg in the '90s (or '50s, for that matter), with staples like veal parmesan and baked clams. After our $17(!) cocktails, we started with the delicious sizzling pancetta, followed by tortellini (the meal's highlight), and ending with the veal parmesan (huge, and served on the bone). While everything was certainly tasty, the cost wasn't commensurate with what we were eating. The cocktails, for instance, have no real right to be $17, and the veal, though wonderful and more than enough for three people, was too expensive for what a simple dish it was.
But while the food offers a more upscale version of tried-and-true American-Italian classics, the service and decor were absolutely impeccable. Our server Marco was the ultimate pro, dressed in a "one of a kind" oxblood Zac Posen suit. He took care of our every need and told some fantastic anecdotes about his life in the food biz. He even personally flambéed our impossibly decadent (and probably unnecessary) Bananas Foster desert. Also impressive was the wine: Passopisciaro Scinniri Rosso, a moderately-priced, full-bodied bottle recommended by our sever, was a perfect pairing with our meal. —Nathan Reese
Chez Jef
Neighborhood: Lower East Side
Address: 241 Bowery
Website: bowerydiner.com
How hard is it to get in?: Suspiciously easy.
Wallet stress: Low
Get this: Baked boucheron
Skip that: Steak tartare
Does it live up to the hype?: Color me underwhelmed.
On a Wednesday evening at 9:30p.m., I arrived at the Bowery Diner, now chef Mathieu Palombino's freshly minted pop-up venture, Chez Jef. There was a single table occupied. The waiter assured me that weekend's were an entirely different scene, though its still filled with "mostly old people." A typical French bistro setting, Chez Jef has a familiar charm: tables cloaked in checkered tablecloths, a chalkboard scrawled with the evening's specials, and all the requisite Parisian kitsch.
The food, though, is a bit more unpredictable. The baked boucheron offers a tangy goat cheese balanced with a briny olive tapenade-smeared toast; I could eat this for every meal and be satisfied. Other dishes failed to deliver: the steak tartare is good enough, but too straightforward (and underseasoned) to excite. The pork chop, marinated with pineapple and laced with celery-cured Vermont bacon, was a sodium bomb. These bistro staples need to refined and perfected—currently, they're missing the mark. —Shanté Cosme
Black Seed
Neighborhood: Nolita
Address: 170 Elizabeth St.
Website: blackseedbagels.com
How hard is it to get in?: Depending on the day, lines can leave you waiting anywhere from 15 minutes to over an hour.
Wallet stress: High (for a bagel)
Get this: Beet-cured lox and tobiko caviar
Skip that: Don't skip anything.
Does it live up to the hype?: Very much so.
If you're a New Yorker, Montréalais, or person who just likes good food (and doesn't have a gluten intolerance), chances are you have strong opinions about where to find the world's best bagels. Still, there are some constants that most everyone can agree on: a bagel should be hand rolled, boiled, dense (but not too dense), chewy (but not too chewy), and well seasoned. Black Seed, SoHo's new haute bagelry, plays like the perfect amalgam of those variables. Bagels are small—(no "scooping" here) but beautiful pieces of art. Toppings are also ingeniously devised, with the house-made beet-cured lox standing out as a highlight. Like most of the flavors at Black Seed, there's nothing overpowering about the fish, there's just an additional depth of flavor.) Also delicious is the tobiko caviar, which I would eat dangerous amounts of if given free reign in the kitchen. Something to note, however, is that the bagels really are small. If you want to get your fill, you'll have to order one of the excellent side-salads. Don't be daunted by the long line: The wait is worth it. —Nathan Reese
Cafe El Presidente
Neighborhood: Flatiron
Address: 30 W 24th St.
Website: cafelpresidente.com
How hard is it to get in?: Effortless.
Wallet stress: Low
Get this: Al pastor taco, Sonoran shrimp taco
Skip that: Guacamole
Does it live up to the hype?: This is a fun spot for good tacos. It exist in a place and time beyond hype.
Forget the Benjamins—it's all about the tortillas, baby. And Café El Presidente makes them fresh, courtesy of a conveyor-belt contraption manned by two tortilleras. The lively space is part Mexican market, part taqueria, and comes to us from the team behind Tacombi at Fonda Nolita. Both offer a vibrant scene, but the new offshoot is notably sleeker and sunnier. The cocktail menu has also been elevated. On offer: a paloma made with fresh grapefruit juice, a nice michelada, and a dangerously refreshing tequila drink shaken with pineapple agua fresca. Bonus points for the lime garnish—always appreciated in this citrus fruit-impoverished economy.
Rather than an elevated take on Mexican like Empellon, El President delivers authenticity in familiar, no-fuss iterations. A shrimp taco is seared with garlic and amplified by a blistered, slightly greasy tortilla. The al pastor tacos (my Mexican bodega go-to) feature tender pork shaved off a pineapple-topped spit and rich avocado crema, and deliver the ideal balance of sweet and savory. The preparation is traditional; it's the tortillas that make the difference. A manager came by and asked how the meal was, and I found myself delivering a monologue about the merits of their tortillas. She offered to send me home with a fresh batch. I declined, but I will return for this reason. That, and the limes. It's the little things. —Shanté Cosme
