#38 at Pho Pasteur - Chinatown

Sorry, blurry lady on the left, I didn't mean to catch you there (picking your ear?). Re-taking the picture was out of the question, as I did not feel like it.

Moline (IL), Richardson (TX), Rosemead (CA), Boston, Sydney, Toronto, San Diego, and New York City. What do all of these cities have in common? According to Google, they are all home to Vietnamese restaurants named 'Pasteur' or 'Pho Pasteur' (apparently unaffiliated) - and I am certain there are more.

So, what's the deal with Vietnam and Pasteur? Who really knows? Not I. I was unaware of how extensive the connection was until I started writing this post and googled "Pho Pasteur," which turned up numerous results from all over the world.
Curiosity and further googling led me to this:

Fully aware of the international importance of his work, Pasteur's disciples dispersed themselves wherever their assistance was needed. In 1891, the first Foreign Institut Pasteur was founded in Saigon (today Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) launching what was to become a vast international network of Instituts Pasteur.

And then questioning my (questionable?) authority on all things Vietnamese, and dear friend, Arthur (Vietnamese by descent, but Texas born and raised), got me this response:

Arthur: something about french colonial influence
especially re: pho's origins in french consomme

Thanks, Arthur!

I don't know about other people, but to me the words 'Pasteur' or 'pasteurize' or 'pasteurization' do not really get my tummy grumbling. And if they do, it's not in a good way. But hey, that's just me.

Festive signage.
That waiter that appears to be delighted about the lower half of his body disintegrating into an amorphous blob roughly the shape of South Vietnam...really creeps me out.

Now, you might be assuming this post is going to be about pho, but you would be wrong. SO WRONG. You have never been so wrong. Shame on you.

Why the hostility, Susan? I don't really know. I'm sorry, it was a joke. I'm at work and not working (because who works on Friday?), and my mind wanders. I'm sleepy, and I have actually never had the pho here.

BBQ Pork Chop! AKA 'pokchap,' AKA 'pokechop,' AKA Com Suon Bi Cha, AKA #38 on the menu.
Pretty, no?

In my estimation, this has to be not only one of the most pleasantly polychromatic, but most satisfying meals $6 ($6.50?) can get you in this city. Or in Manhattan, at least.
It's nothing spectacular, nothing knock-your-socks-off about it. But it's hearty, and homey, and delicious. And the portion is very generous. Also, I am one who really likes to have a lot of variety packed into one meal, and this plate's got it. The pork chop itself is nicely cooked, sweet and salty (the chili sauce in the squeeze bottle provided adds a nice kick), and just moist and fatty enough without being greasy. Not once in the 8 or 9 times I've had it has it come out the least bit dry.
In fact, twice in the past month M has actually gotten 2 of these for take-away, biked them home to Greenpoint in styrofoam containers, and I'll be darned if they weren't still lip-smackin' delicious*.
Then you have the dry, shredded pork [stuff] on the side. Pork 2 ways! That's fancy. As one would expect, it is dry, and also has a sort of grainy texture. And a bit salty. I wouldn't say it's not tasty, it's...interesting. I usually eat a few bites of it with some rice and some of the crinkle-cut pickled carrots or daikon, and then try to pawn the rest off onto M, who's usually cleared his plate by the time I make it over to this part.

*FYI: thesaurus entries for "tasty" are sucks.

Egg...thing.

My second favorite part of the dish is what I like to endearingly call the "egg thing." I don't know what it is. A cupcake-shaped omelet? Anyway, it's good. Very dense, and packed with glass or rice noodles, bits of pork (pork 3 ways!), and seems to have a hint of some kind of spice that I can't place. I want to say it almost tastes a tiny bit cinnamon-y, or cardamom-y, but that actually doesn't sound very good, so I won't say it. Consider it not said.

Not the most appealing cross-section shot.

And then you have the rice, and the ornamental vegetables (which I always eat, because they're there).

For a quick, cheap, and satisfying meal downtown, to stay or take-away, this a great stand-by. The restaurant itself is a little tight, and has weird feng shui* issues (if you're not careful, you'll trip right over a 4-top directly in front of the door), but the service is fast and friendly enough. Highly recommended. I do want to try other things on the menu, but M and I are creatures of habit (lazy brains), and it's not really a place to take a group, so I can't make any promises.

*I know approximately nothing about feng shui.**

**Man, I need to cool it with the footnotes and parentheticals.


85 Baxter St (btwn Walker and White)
New York, NY 10013-4433
(212) 608-3656

Er.

Blog inertia. Fuckfuckfuck.

So many pictures.

Soon, soon.

Someday, I'm gonna be a real blogger, and this will be a real blog. Again, not today.

Tonight we are doing a Miracle Fruit get-together, because we are old and behind the times, so we are partying like it's 1970. Or 2007. Or whatever.

Also, I started culinary school! Lots of things happening.

Me in about 4 hours:



This day is dragging like blargh.

Yun Nan Flavour Snack Inc. - Sunset Park, Brooklyn

Perpetually catching up on posts. This happened...a while ago.

We made it back, and it was open!
Yun Nan Flavour Snack Inc.
No shutters!
This is the menu. Its modest simplicity belies the exquisiteness* of the actual food.

We let M take over the task of ordering for the four of us, which turned out to be a good move. He picked out the 2 items on the menu which he had had on previous visits, which were incidentally the 2 items on the menu with quirky misspellings or substituted marquis letters for the word 'sauce' (I assume they ran out of 'a's for the "Dumpling with hot and sour sduce." I also suspect the 'p' in 'crispy' is actually an inverted 'd.')

*'Exquisite' is probably not a word anyone would use to describe the food here - not even me. I just liked the way it sounded and contrasted with 'simplicity.' A better word would be 'drrrtylicious.' But such urban colloquial terms are not really my style, even though I just made that one up right now.
Hot 'Sause.'

M told me that the first time he went there, after he had placed his order, the owner[?] of the place asked his Chinese dining companion how he - a glaring, flaring, blaring gweilo - knew to order the two best things on the menu. Such is the mysterious wisdom of M.*
He got us 4 orders of #13 - Rice noodle with crispy meat 'sause,' and 2 orders of the previously mentioned #27 - Dumpling with hot and sour sauce. I'm usually not a fan of hot and sour, but I put my trust in him. And it was well rewarded.

*Chowhound.

Unidentifiable amoebic forms and noodles floating leisurely in a nebulous broth. How gorgeous is that? Intensified by a few plops of ripened (read: old, but better for it) chili oil from an ancient dollar-store ceramic cup: sweat-inducing bliss on a warm night.

What does "crispy meat sauce" mean? I, who have had the pleasure of experiencing this dish, still cannot say. There is no 'sauce' to speak of, but the crispy bits of 'meat' (left) were delicious. Kind of like deep fried beef jerky, but not any jerky you'd buy trapped in cellophane from a store. Richer. Untainted by processing and overseasoning. Pure, subtle meat flavor - and crispy. And those amoebic, tubular forms (right and bottom)? I think tripe - but unlike any tripe I've ever had. Exquisitely fatty and heart-rendingly tender*. Hands down my favorite part of the entire meal - I'd go back just for that. The rice noodles were also a pleasant surprise, as they were much more springy and substantial than I would ever expect from a rice noodle. This soup entails a lot more chewing than your average soup.

*Beer makes me spew maudlin descriptions like wat.
The dumplings also did not disappoint. The skin was just as thin as I like, but not overboiled to the point of turning limp. The broth, deeply imbued with meat and tangy chili flavor, was worthy of sipping on its own. The meat filling was plentfiul and had a nice bite. These, as well as the noodles, come out piping hot, which works out well because I think the flavors of both only get better after sitting in the broth for a few minutes.
Obligatory close up, in Blurry Susan Vision™.

The guy running the place, who I assumed to be the owner, was gregarious and I think very excited to have us, obvious non-locals who had journeyed out seeking his delicious 'flavour snacks,' in the place. He even remembered M from his few past visits long ago. He was extremely accommodating and pleasant - exuberant, even - despite the very tight space being slightly overtaken by the four of us, and always trying to make sure we were enjoying everything. We promised we'd be back soon, and I'm certain it'll be sooner than later.

BYOB to experience Maximum Exquisiteness.

Yun Nan Flavour Snack Inc.
774 49th St (between 7th Ave & 8th Ave)
Brooklyn, NY 11220
(718) 633-3090

Weekend Retreat / Quickfire Challenge! - Phoenicia, NY

A few weekends ago, Lisa and I retreated up to her family's Summer house in Phoenicia, NY - aka my dream house. Four miles outside of town, up Woodland Valley Road, beside a serene whispering mountain creek (the only sound to be heard), the house comes complete with a wraparound porch, hammock, and porch swing - optimal accommodations for nightly bat-watching (very frightening and fun - they fly right by your face!).

One hitch in our plans actually ended up being the fortuitous impetus for this post: we missed our noon car rental reservation, because we were late and they closed at noon. (Who closes at noon?) Thus, we were forced to cab it up to the house from the Kingston bus station, making a pit stop at the Phoenicia deli for provisions, and possibly stranding ourselves in the mountains for the weekend.

We picked up some sandwich materials for lunch, some dry pasta and prepared pasta sauce for dinner, and placed them on the counter. We were 3 bucks short. While digging and scrounging for $3 worth of change in our respective purses*, two words rose out of the fog of my hungover brain: Quickfire Challenge. "Screw the sauce!" we cried, throwing caution and purse lint to the wind, and applauding our ingenuity.

*Admittedly too dainty a name for our huge crapbags full of essentials and nonessential garbage.

Delicious mountain sandwich. Turkey and muenster on toasted rye, w/mustard and mayo. [Full disclosure: this photo was staged. I wolfed down my first sandwich before realizing that I wanted to post about the trip, and so was obliged to create a new 'picture sandwich,' with cutely criss-crossed cornichons. And eat that one, too. The sacrifices I make.]

Isn't it wonderful how a 2 hour bus ride, 1 hour cab ride, and unfortunate mishaps can turn a simple thing like turkey on rye into such a beautiful, glorious thing? It was.


Kitchen Stadium (I know, mixing my cooking show references. I'm capricious like that.)

The Challenge: Make a delicious meal using spaghetti as the main ingredient, and only what was found in the pantry and fridge. Thankfully, neither of us opted to use the marhsmallows.


Susan's Cold Soba-Inspired Spaghetti Salad: did not taste good. I won't say what went in it, because I think this is something that should never be replicated. But I got points for carving radish flowers, and making little scallion wispies for aesthetic appeal. I was going for a "Summertime Garden" sort of look.

Susan's Simple & Tasty Spaghetti: onions, garlic, olive oil, salt/pepper, dry oregano, dash of lemon juice, fresh tomatoes, and turkey bacon. I played it safe this time, and it ended up pretty tasty, indeed. Not revelatory, but it did the job. It took everything I had to resist covering the whole thing in cheese.
Lisa, however, did not show such restraint.


Lisa's Spaghetti Casserole Surprise: the surprise was cheese. Gobs and gobs of 3 kinds of melted cheese. Like grilled cheese, but with spaghetti instead of bread. Lisa's an artist. It's conceptual.

Lisa's "Wakey Wakey Eggs & Bakey" Appetizer: the "bakey" is actually hot dogs, not bacon - but she's so adorable, who cares? She also cheated by making 2 dishes not using spaghetti, but the judges [ourselves] were willing to let it slide, since it meant not having to eat anymore spaghetti.

Lisa's Fiesta Salad Surprise: Lisa does not like predictable food. I'm actually uncertain what the 'surprise' was this time. Vegetables? Interestingly, her appetizer that supplanted bacon with hot dogs did not contain the word 'surprise' in the name.
She also stole that radish tulip from my dish.

In the end, we both won. Duh. We also had a lot of fun making quippy, Top Chef Judge-esque remarks like, "I can appreciate what you were trying to achieve here, but the flavors just weren't there." Lisa was a lot more ruthless than that - she was playing Gail Simmons.
Endless fun. Yes, we are nerds.

And now, some gratuitous idyllic nature shots of the gorgeous creek and swimming hole where we spent hours lying around like happy manatees (do manatees lie around?).


Nature
We watched that dude (scampering on the bottom right) catch a big fish. It was pretty neat.


Crick
(In the neck of the woods that was populated by tired nation on the fly...)

Swimmin' Hole...too cold for swimmin'.


I played tic-tac-toe with myself. It was a cat's game, which was a relief.

Fun Time House
Phoenicia, NY

Fonts

I just figured out how to change the font. Hurrah.
Also, new layout.

Lucky Eight Restaurant Inc. - Sunset Park

The other day (actually about 3 weeks ago now) M and I decided to trek out to Sunset Park after work to Yun Nan Flavour Snack Inc. for some delicious meaty, soupy, noodly food stuffs. Luckily the rain had stopped by the end of our long journey on the N train, so we had a pleasantly dry walk for the 12 or so blocks to our destination. And then things went downhill.



Unlucky:
"Close today sorry." Yes, close.
I especially like how they first wrote, "Close one day" - a poignant statement emphasizing the fact that they were closed only for the ONE day we randomly elected to go there.

We wandered back down the street, and upon a friend's suggestion ended up at Lucky Eight Restaurant Inc. (What's with all the 'Inc.'s? Maybe Chinese people think corporations remind people of money, which makes them think of delicious food? Who knows.)

Mmm...incorporated...

We perused the very extensive picture menu, scanning for interesting names with enticing animal parts, and - after being told they were out of the suckling pig - ended up starting with Drunken Duck and Jellyfish.

Let me tell you, this duck was drunk as fuck. If it wasn't sliced on a plate for our consumption, it would've been puking and crying in a karaoke bar singing "I Will Survive," through vomit and tears.

One of the more interesting preparations of duck I've had. I don't know if I'd call it 'tasty.' Served cold, the duck was very tender, and obviously moist, as it was totally soused with what I suspect might have been baijiu (Chinese fire water). Wikipedia has this to say about baijiu: "There are a number of accounts in English which comment unfavorably on the taste of baijiu, comparing it with, for example paint thinner, rubbing alcohol or diesel fuel." I think that's about the impression I had when my dad fed me a tiny ceramic shot glass of it sometime in college. It'll put hair on your chest. This is coming from a girl who once pounded an entire bottle of straight soju in one go, just to prove a point (I don't remember what that point was, but I definitely drove it home...several times in early college). I actually think I could have gotten a buzz from just eating it, even if I hadn't been washing it down with a Tsingtao. Being that I do have an affinity for the taste (and effects) of alcohol, this was a worthwhile dish to try, if only for the novelty and the buzz. If, however, you are not fond of the taste of alcohol, I wouldn't recommend it. Because that is what it tastes like: duck and moonshine. The jellyfish tasted like slightly pickled jellyfish - gelatinous and tangy. I wouldn't be eager to order this again.

Oxtail with Chinese Herbs. Or, blobby bits in various shades of brown. Not the most attractive of dishes.

Oxtail is a great cut of meat, and I pretty much love it in any form or preparation (that I've had). It's fatty, usually very tender, with those lovely tendon-y, cartilage-y bits, and has great flavor. This dish was no exception in that capacity. The seasoning was surprisingly delicate, and not too salty, which I can appreciate. I was going to say it tasted 'herbacious,' but that is evident in the name. Fragrant, slightly sweet, slightly salty, with notes of ginger and ginseng. The ginseng, while very subtle here, was probably what turned me off a little. When I was growing up, my mother would often stew this horrendously noxious concoction of ginseng, red dates, and goodness knows what else, in a crockpot for days at a time, and then try to force me to drink it to 'make me grow tall.' I'm the tallest in my family (5' 5"! Woohoo!) next to my dad, so maybe I have her - and ginseng - to thank. In any case, despite the eventual benefits I may have reaped, that bitter, medicinal, dirt-like flavor of ginseng is something I am not quite mature enough to appreciate yet. However, traumatic associations aside, the meat was good, and the supple sheets of soy bean curd skin had a pleasant texture somewhat like very al dente pasta.

"The Pride of Lucky Eight"

So, we ordered this dish based on an extremely laudatory description from, among others, Peter Meehan in the Times in 2007. Here's his impression:

It comes to the table, sumptuously oily, in a heaping green tangle: some kind of reedy, oniony chives shot through with the white, the green and the bulb end of scallions all separate. Perfectly julienned stalks of Chinese celery add crunch. Rehydrated shiitake mushrooms add a meaty sweetness, slices of meaty abalone a little chew. Bits of baby squid create textural intrigue, and shreds of dried scallop add a depth that’s hard to pinpoint but easy to appreciate. It looks as if each element in the dish was individually browned, then thrown together to mask the kitchen’s precision. It is, without question, the finest stir-fried dish I’ve encountered...

My impression can be summed up in three letters: M.S.G.
That's not to say that Mr. Meehan's account is inaccurate - the dish did include all or most of the ingredients he listed. And the celery was in fact crunchy, the abalone chewy, the mushrooms mushroomy, the scallions scalliony, etc. But even with that impressive tableau of textural elements, I found the prevailing flavor, a thick blanket of M.S.G., to be distracting. In fact, I think that might be the answer to Meehan's beguiling "depth that’s hard to pinpoint but easy to appreciate." Sounds about right. It did also successfully "mask the kitchen's precision" (is that a good thing?). So well that it ends up tasting - to me - like about 80% of the generic Chinese [meat/seafood/misc.] stir-fry dishes I've had from restaurants that are miles from getting a review in the Times. Those Magical Savory Granules: I know them well. There was also a "seafood" flavor, but I put it in quotes because of the way M.S.G. has of syntheticizing (that's probably not a word) natural flavors. I'm not going to say it's inauthentic, because what the feck do I know. It's just not my bag.

All in all, not what M and I would call a victory. It was fine. I still somehow managed to eat beyond my stomach's capacity for comfortably full, teetering on sick (what can I say, I'm a pro, I do it for my reader[s?]). While there were many other intriguing things on the menu that I'd like to explore at some point, I don't think we'll be racing back to Lucky Eight anytime soon. Especially when Yun Nan Flavour Snack Inc.* is just down the street.

This entry has too many words.

*We finally did make it out there when it was open...and it was delicious. That post coming...eventually.

Lucky Eight Restaurant Inc.
5204 8th Ave (at 52nd St)
Brooklyn, 11220
(718) 851-8862

Late June Supper at the Old Inn on the Green - New Marlborough, MA

Guest post! This post comes courtesy of my dear friend Arthur, who recently went on what sounds like a dreamy weekend escape and an EPICurean adventure. I am hastily posting this during my lunch break*, from an emailed copy with the pictures as attachments, so there might be a stray liver or breast in the wrong place. Hope I didn't fuck it up! (If I did, then that's what you get when you try to upstage me by having fancier food and more pictures than me on my own blog, jerkface.)

Thanks for saving my ass [as always], Arthur!

*My name for any time that I'm looking at blogs at work.


I spent the last weekend in June up in the Berkshires, ferried up the Taconic Parkway alongside my dear friend Lendon (whose birthday it was) in a baby blue Chrysler Sebring convertible. Alas, rental fleets. To be fair, the Sebring did provide a modicum of enjoyable open-air motoring, in its own soft and wobbly way. The more important issue at hand, though, was where to treat Lendon for his birthday dinner. Our original plan had been to take a day trip upstate and have an early meal at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, but as the trip itself expanded, I neglected to adjust the dinner plan accordingly. So I found myself flipping through a local food periodical in a motel room and landed on a double-page ad for The Old Inn on the Green in New Marlborough, MA.

I learned with a quick Google search that current co-owner and executive chef Peter Platt purchased the Old Inn from its prior owners in 2005, three years after he left the Wheatleigh Hotel in Lenox for the inn’s kitchen. His French technique-based menus landed the inn among Food & Wine’s top 50 hotel restaurants in a recent year and earned a favorable comment from Wine Spectator, which seemed like the sparkliest accolades to be found among the endless and mostly uncompelling ads, so I thought I’d see if they could squeeze us in. Two at 8:30? Apparently no problem. Allow me to deflate all suspense and tell you now that we lucked out to a ludicrous degree and had a mind-blowing evening. I love getting away from the city.




Take your Philippe Starck ghost chairs and stuff ‘em.

The Old Inn dates back to 1760, when it was a stagecoach relay, and it’s been restored in a way that preserves a nice patina over the whole place. The dining rooms are lit solely by candlelight, a touch of authenticity that I actually relished given how sadly accustomed I’ve become to the décor so many New York City restaurants get away with. Everything about the inn, and especially the food (aside from the locality of most of the ingredients), was decidedly and welcomely un-trendy.

Once we’d ordered the tasting menu, we decided against the wine pairings in favor of sharing a bottle, and the task of choosing one wine to accompany seven distinct courses produced a crippling feeling of inadequacy. Luckily, James the sommelier only let me mumble on helplessly about white Burgundies for about 20 seconds before sparing me further humiliation with a cheaper Silvaner (2007 “Weingut am Stein,” Ludwig Knoll) that worked out perfectly.



We were thoroughly amused.

And then came the euphoric onslaught. The kitchen started by sending out two courses that weren’t on the menu: a chilled cucumber soup amuse, followed by truffle-oiled asparagus tips with pickled parsnip and radish. The cucumber soup lifted me out of a cocktail-induced inattentiveness, and even looking back over the whole meal, it was a standout – tart and grassy from a bright streak of citrus and a heavy dose of cilantro.

The first course from the menu was a roasted red beet tarte tatin with herbed chevre. This candy-sweet ‘appetizer’ could pass muster on many a fine dessert menu. I don’t know if Platt employs a pastry chef, but if not, then consider my respect for him tripled based on the care and creativity in this dish, not to mention the actual dessert(s).



Fuck a terrine. I’ll take my liver caveman style.

For the next course, Lendon had a seared diver scallop and butter-poached lobster atop caramelized fennel and lobster sauce. He ate all the lobster before I could try any, but the bite of scallop and fennel I had was awfully good. I had seared foie gras with black beluga lentil salad, chanterelles and a madeira sauce. Salad, my ass. Those lentils were heavily studded with bits of bacon (hallelujah), but even with the fois and the rich mushrooms and rich sauce, the dish as a whole wasn’t overwhelming the way its parts and generous portioning might suggest. Matter of fact, everything the kitchen sent out was consistently clean and enjoyably finish-able.



Best course of the evening; the peas prevailed.

After four courses the Silvaner was opening up nicely and I was tasting more fruit, but it was still crisp and refreshing. It paired especially well with our next course. For Lendon, crunchy-skinned arctic char with fresh peas and tarragon sauce. In his words, “the peas win.” I didn’t argue. I was too busy going apeshit over my squab – a perfectly rare breast and leg, with a savoy cabbage parcel (I have no idea what the parcel was filled with, but needless to say, it was tasty), roasted cauliflower and porcini sauce. When I first read the menu, I wondered if the proliferation of different sauces was a symptom of Platt’s French technique gone overboard. But the palate doesn’t lie, and I couldn’t find fault with any one of them – especially this one.

Both of us could have gone home full and quite happy after those five courses, and if I were to last for three more, I needed a cigarette. Out on the porch, I was taken with how dark and quiet it was, as far as I could see in every direction, and I suspected that in any other place, this food wouldn’t make nearly as big an impression. Or rather, I realized how perfectly matched the food is to the inn and its environs. The difference between this dinner and almost every other dinner I’ve had became suddenly immeasurable.




There’s even more. I shit you not.

We sat back down to an asparagus risotto with a toasty parmesan tuile. Two thumbs up to Chef Platt for cooking the rice al dente to the point of slight crunchiness. For our main courses, Lendon had a roulade of sole with saffron sauce, and I had a horseradish-crusted rack of lamb with crispy polenta and tiny vegetables in a rosemary lamb jus, both superb. The plump chop standing jauntily on my plate had a nice warm center but wasn’t at all chewy, and the accompaniments made an unimpeachable case for keeping things simple.


Perseverance yields sweet rewards. Oh, yes.

The cheese course that followed also could have ended the meal perfectly: Bayley Hazen (incidentally one of my all-time favorites – a raw cow’s milk blue from Vermont that you should seek out immediately if you’re not already a huge fan) with poached fruit and a petite salad. And, incredibly, before the dessert course from the menu, they sent out a first dessert of homemade hazelnut and chocolate gelatos in a frozen strawberry with peach-apricot compote.

The last course was perhaps the most beautiful – a frozen lemon mousse dome topped with rhubarb-white wine gelee on a platform of strawberry gelato and a graham-like crust. This was, if you haven’t been keeping track, our tenth course, but we polished it off like champs. Anything less, I feel, would have been an offense to this brilliant operation.



Petit-fours, empty bottle, full stomachs and a very light wallet.

We dropped the Sebring’s clunky ragtop and cranked the heat up for the drive back to our motel, and the bracing, fragrant country air was the perfect thing to cap off three and a half hours of sustained eating. It really was a singular performance by the kitchen. I suspect, however, that limiting oneself to two or three courses from the inn’s a la carte menu wouldn’t make dinner there any less impressive, due to the skill and distinctiveness in both the food and – just as importantly – the environment. Most of my recent food outings in the city have been of the bang-for-your-buck variety, which typically requires convincing oneself that an utter lack of ambiance is its own kind of ‘ambiance’, so happening upon such a meal in an equally inviting place made the splurge worth every penny. Even if you just want a break from the inexhaustible list of must-try places in New York (yes please!), then look no further.

The Old Inn on the Green, Route 57, New Marlborough, MA

www.oldinn.com

Many thanks to Lendon Flanagan for the photos.