salmaland.com » Soho/Nolita

Soho/Nolita: Travertine

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 11:51:25 +0000

The marbly travertine walls facing the street look bizarrely out of place on Kenmare—somehow the former Little Charlie’s Clam Bar seemed to blend right in—but walk into Travertine and you’re instantly in a softly lit, glam little nook. Banquettes are filled with everyone from Nolita types to blingy guys with their coiffed dates. But it’s easy to be automatically lulled into a sense of beauty and pleasure and ease—hell, you’re paying for it, and it doesn’t come easy these days—and to be transported by ex-Babbo and Top Chef fixture Manuel Trevino’s handmade pastas and elegant Italian-Med dishes: from mezzaluna filled with butternut squash and parmigiano reggiano and showered with crushed amaretti cookies, to buttery sauteed skate with parsnip puree, even to gorgeous appetizers like burrata with oranges and toasted hazelnuts, or a must-have salad of escarole hearts, black currants, cheddar, and marcona almond vinaigrette.

Travertine. 19 Kenmare St. at Elizabeth St.; (212) 966-1810.

Prices/Features: UPSC, VEG (See Welcome to Salmaland for key to letter abbreviations.)

Soho: Despaña

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 11:51:08 +0000

A fantasy shop for Spanish-food fetishists, Despaña now has some tables in back where you can gorge privately on the Basque tapas laid out marvelously on the counter. Some of my favorites here are the Flautas Castañas,small sandwiches of salchicon sausage, goat cheese, and pickled piquillo peppers on a mini-baguette, sweetened with a dab of chestnut cream. Mind-blowing deliciousness. At $5.50, they’re a bit pricey as snacks go, but one can hold you over in a happy stupor for a couple of hours. One weekend, after having just listened to a Spanish-Colombian couple rhapsodize about Despaña’s morcilla at a party the night before, I couldn’t resist going in for the Pintxo Asturiana—a tapas-size ($3.50) wedge of crusty bread topped with luxuriously tender morcilla (blood sausage) and pickled piquillo peppers. It’s not for everyone, morcilla. But once you’re a convert there’s no going back. Afterwards, walk a few blocks east on Broome to Papabubble, for swirly lollipops made by hand behind the counter, and candies in flavors like spicy mango.

Despaña. 408 Broome St. between Lafayette and Cleveland Sts.; 212-219-5050

Prices/Features: MOD (See Welcome to Salmaland for key to letter abbreviations.)

Soho/Nolita: Snack

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:34:02 +0000

Nothing about “vegetarian souvlaki” sounds appealing—unless you’ve tried the sandwich at Snack, Soho’s microscopic Greek restaurant and takeout joint. Big fat Greek butter-beans are wrapped up with feta, tomato, red onion, and luscious cucumber-yogurt tzatziki in thick, warm gyro bread. (Only quibble: They go a little too heavy on the tomatoes when they’re not in season.) Snack’s other butter-bean creation, the lemony, arugula-packed “gigantes” salad, also rocks. Want something meatier, or smaller, or heftier? Snack has an impressively substantial Greek menu, given how tiny the space is (just four two-top tables). Winners: the savory pies stuffed with herb-spiked chicken, olives, or spinach and served with Greek salad; the pastitsio, a sort of Greek lasagna layered with bechamel, ground beef, and macaroni; and the daily specials, which might include golden, garlicky, perfectly roasted chicken.

Snack. 105 Thompson St. between Prince and Spring Sts.; (212) 925-1040.

Prices/Features: CHP, VGT (See Welcome to Salmaland for key to letter abbreviations.)

Soho/Nolita: Cafe Gitane

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:09:59 +0000

Café Gitane sums up what’s enchanting about Nolita—and what’s so damned annoying about it. A little café on a side street with deliciously potent coffee; a laid-back, vaguely French-Moroccan vibe; glossy international magazines to browse through; sunlight pouring through the streetside windows. You could spend hours here. Except you can’t get a table, ever. (Unless you show up around 9am on a weekday morning.) Order a cafe creme and the baked eggs with basil or an open-face sandwich of chili-spiked avocado on whole-grain toast, and be reminded why you’re alive, why you’re in this crazy town, and why it’s all worth it. The couscous is better than it needs to be too, especially when you spike it with the harissa that comes on the side. But for that, you’ll have to show up at midday or evening rush hour—and, yes, wait. (In fall ‘09, a new branch of Gitane opened at the Jane Hotel in the West Village.)

Café Gitane. 242 Mott St. between Prince and Houston Sts.; (212) 334-9552.

Prices/Features: CHP, VGT (See Welcome to Salmaland for key to letter abbreviations.)

Soho/Nolita: Raoul’s

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 11:00:28 +0000

Pic courtesy of Raoul's

Don’t show up late to dinner at Raoul’s. There’s no place to wait—the bar area is cramped and zoolike—and your dinner date will want to kill you. If you get the showing-up-on-time part right, you can’t really go wrong at this sweetly worn-in old French bistro. The crisply seared, juice-oozing steak deserves its fame; the frisee-lardons salad with a poached duck egg is the perfect starter; the oysters are a must. And the house tarot-card reader is still upstairs, just in case you want to risk messing with an otherwise perfect night.

Raoul’s. 180 Prince St. between Sullivan and Thompson Sts. (212) 966-3518.

Prices/Features: MOD (See Welcome to Salmaland for key to letter abbreviations.)