Cigarette cockroach is giving pizza rat a run for its money in New York
Learning targets: 11-12W1: I can write arguments to support claims that analyze substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.
11-12SL4: I can present claims, findings, and supporting evidence, conveying a clear and distinct perspective; alternative or opposing perspectives are addressed; organization, development, substance, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
Due at the close of class on Monday, October 21
What will you turn in?
1) Exercise 2: (class handout / copy below)
2) Your personal dining chart from the restauant you selected
3) Your review: 1. length 300 words
2. follows the information in "how to put it all together"
3. must include article title
4. your name as the critic
5. two images
Please share: 2006630
REVIEW ONE
Tables for Two
At Mo’s Original, It Pays to Be
Open-Minded
In Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, a pair
of talented chefs have found success in the unexpected intersection of
Caribbean food and ramen noodles.
By Hannah
Goldfield
In Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, a neighborhood with a large
Caribbean population and a lot of Caribbean restaurants, Mo’s stands out by
finding the intersection of Jamaican and Japanese food.
Photograph by Makeda Sandford for The New Yorker
The story of Mo’s Original, a new
restaurant in Brooklyn, involves a few false starts. First, there was Glady’s,
an eclectic sandwich shop opened in Crown Heights, in 2013, by Michael Jacober,
a chef and grilled-cheese-truck impresario. The sandwiches were excitingly
unusual, but after a few months Jacober, feeling like an interloper in the neighborhood,
decided to rebrand as a Caribbean restaurant, focussing on Jamaican-style jerk
to better serve the local community. If this was pandering, it was in good
faith—Jacober travelled around Jamaica to educate himself and found a partner
in one of his sous-chefs, Junior Felix, a native of St. Lucia—and it worked; in
2016, they expanded to a second, bigger location, in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens.
The menu showcases several varieties of ramen, including one made with
a vegan mushroom broth, fried tofu, and smoked cherry tomatoes (left) and a
spicy miso-curry iteration (right) with a rich, creamy chicken broth and smoked
chicken.Photograph by Makeda Sandford for The New Yorker
In these new digs,
however, Glady’s didn’t quite take. And so, in May, Felix, with a new partner,
William (Mo) Garfield, a onetime collaborator with Jacober (who recently
divested from both places), decided to rebrand, as a Caribbean-ramen
restaurant. If this sounds to you, as it did to me, like an outlandishly
misguided and even lazily of-the-moment idea: I’m happy to report that it pays
to be more open-minded. Garfield and Felix are not trend-chasing hacks but,
rather, skilled chefs who have found the intersection of their passions.
Garfield, originally from Portland, Maine, and a veteran of Japanese
restaurants, is a devoted student of ramen; Felix is fluent in Caribbean
flavors and a master of the custom smoker that he and Jacober designed for
Glady’s, which burns American maple and ash wood in addition to traditional
Jamaican pimento chips.
The bar serves
beers on tap, sake, and tiki-style cocktails, plus a house-made yuzu lemonade. Photograph by Makeda Sandford for The New Yorker
The success
of Mo’s is best exemplified by the spicy miso-curry ramen. Curry is Caribbean,
curry is Japanese, curry is fantastic when added in balanced proportion to an
incredibly rich chicken broth, which is so thick with miso that it’s almost a
sauce. Golden and creamy, it’s a perfect base for a tangle of thick-cut wavy
noodles and generous curls of succulent smoked chicken thigh, nestled with
charred cabbage and carrots and topped with wisps of scallion, garlic oil, and
a house-made togarashi spice mixture.
The “smoke”
ramen, made with both smoked-chicken broth and shreds of smoked pork loin,
would be my second choice, and, in the mushroom-broth ramen, the
three-dimensional flavor of the sweet smoked cherry tomatoes alone makes that
dish worth ordering. (The latter is vegan, and the kitchen is unusually
accommodating of dietary restrictions, using only wheat-free tamari in lieu of
regular soy sauce and offering to substitute rice noodles in any ramen.)
But the
menu goes far beyond noodles. Dinner begins with complimentary baskets of
freshly made, copper-hued potato chips sprinkled with togarashi. Appetizers
include crunchy tater tots topped with eel sauce, aioli, and bonito flakes;
fried Brussels sprouts with vegan fish sauce (made with seaweed and mushrooms);
and plump bao buns filled with sweet-and-sour pickles and meaty-textured
deep-fried tofu. A “big salad” features frilly-tendrilled mixed greens that
taste like they came from the farmers’ market as opposed to a plastic
clamshell, tossed with carrots, daikon, hemp seeds, almonds, and herbs in an
oniony dressing. The smoked chicken and pork loin are available barbecue style,
too, and, to really please the crowds, there’s a burger—with two beef
patties—plus a veggie “burger” (actually a smoked portobello cap).
A few
months in, Mo’s has some kinks to iron out. On several recent evenings, the
kitchen had run out of a good third of its offerings, and delicious-sounding
specials, though prominently advertised, have been elusive; I’ve been chasing
the smoked lobster with corn for weeks. I was sorry to see a dish of excellent
head-on shrimp grilled in soy and ginger replaced by one with shrimp breaded
and fried, and to be served a plate of tamari-brined fried chicken that was
just shy of inedibly burnt. With a few tweaks, Mo’s could end its
Goldilocks-like journey and feel exactly right. (Dishes $5-$15.)
♦Review 2
Keith McNally’s meatpacking-district
destination once had a sexy edge, but now it seems merely to blend in.
The other
night, at the recently rebooted Pastis, a server who had just shouted “Sock it
to me!” while taking my table’s dinner order leaned in conspiratorially. Lowering
his voice to a near-whisper, he said, haltingly, “And—are we having bread?” Of
course we were having bread, my companions and I sputtered. Did we look like
no-bread people? His expression turned sheepish. “I just moved from Los
Angeles, the no-bread capital of the world,” he explained.
Pastis is named for pastis, an anise-flavored apéritif usually mixed
with water and ice before serving. Photograph by Vanessa Granda for The New
Yorker
In
fairness, Pastis is the sort of place that attracts plenty of no-bread people,
not to mention no-dairy people and no-sugar people. When the original Pastis
opened, in 1999, in the meatpacking district, it became one of the Midas-like
restaurateur Keith McNally’s most golden establishments, where the food, though
more than serviceable, was not really the point. A convincing replica of an
elegantly understated Parisian brasserie, it was, first and foremost, a hangout
for A-listers like Sarah Jessica Parker and the Olsen twins, and a means for
commoners to brush shoulders with them while spending lavishly for the
privilege.
Pastis
ratified the transformation of the neighborhood from industrial to industrial
chic. In 2014, it closed, after the building that housed it was slated for
major construction and the rent tripled; it was eventually replaced by a
Restoration Hardware, one of the many luxury chains that have lent the area the
feel of an open-air mall. This past June, McNally reopened it, in partnership
with the flashy restaurateur Stephen Starr, in a new location a few blocks
away.
Sticking with classics, such as steak tartare, is the best way to have
a joyful meal here.Photograph by Vanessa Granda for The New Yorker
This dining
room is very similar to the old one: café chairs, marble tables, and ruddy
leather banquettes; white subway tiles and tin ceilings; distressed mirrors
glowing in the halogen light. (The shelves of cigarette packs are long gone.
Overheard at breakfast: “I’m listening to you, but I’m also going to pick my
Juul up off the floor.”) The no-bread people, donning Cartier bracelets and
Louis Vuitton-print shifts, have come rushing back; in recent weeks, it’s been
nearly impossible to get a table for dinner at a reasonable hour, and even at
lunchtime on a Tuesday in the dead of August there was a thirty-minute wait. On
that Tuesday, some celebrities had returned, too: the performer Sandra Bernhard
walked out with the former Vogue editor André Leon Talley; the chef and Food
Network host Anne Burrell posed for photographs.
On one
visit, frites were crisp and as coarsely salted as an icy highway in February;
on another, they were considerably more limp but only marginally less
enjoyable, accompanying plump mussels in an extra-buttery white-wine broth and
a brawny hanger steak carved into juicy slices. Frites are a must, as are
smashed pommes at breakfast. At a moment when New York’s French restaurants can
feel exhaustingly ambitious, there’s something refreshing about revelling in
plain potatoes. And do not forgo the bread, which, like the morning
Viennoiseries (croissants, pain au chocolat, brioche), comes from McNally’s
Balthazar Bakery. It’s a perfectly chewy, tangy pain au levain, served with
tubs of whipped butter. Life is too short to be a no-bread person. (Entrées
$17-$59.) ♦
Exercise 1: with a partner
Make a list of the restaurant qualities that attract you to a restaurant.
Make another list of qualities that you don’t like.
Good Qualities Negative Qualities
********************************************************************************
Exercise 2: Based upon the two reviews above, fill in the Restaurant Data Charts below. (class handouts) To be collected as class participation grades
Your Name_______________________________-Restaurant Review
Data Sheet
Name of Restaurant_____________________________________________
Location
|
|
Menu
|
|
Type of restaurant
|
|
Price
|
|
Clientele
|
|
Atmosphere
|
|
Reputation
|
|
Food Quality
|
|
Service
|
|
Your experience
|
Your Name_______________________________-Restaurant Review Data Sheet
Name of Restaurant_____________________________________________
Location
| |
Menu
| |
Type of restaurant
| |
Price
| |
Clientele
| |
Atmosphere
| |
Reputation
| |
Food Quality
| |
Service
| |
Your experience
|
How to put this all together for your
own review
1. Begin with a general statement that
mentions the restaurant’s name and location.
2. It is also possible to begin with a “hook” and
then provide specifics about the restaurant. (A hook is the first sentence or
two of a review. The purpose of a hook is to grab the reader’s attention.)
3. Food – Describe the food on the menu in
detail. You can mention a particular dish that you have had there, if you think
it is appropriate.
4. Atmosphere – Discuss the exterior and interior
décor. Also mention the ambience, background music and special features of the
restaurant.
5. Service – Some reviews may give details about
the service from the first moment a customer enters the restaurant until the
customer has finished the meal and leaves. It is okay to mention the name of a
server or chef that is exceptionally friendly, helpful or talented.
6. Clientele – Mention what type of people like to
go there. Is there a dress code?
7. Price – It is important to mention the general
price range; however, specifics are not necessary. A “hint” about whether the
place is expensive or cheap may be adequate.
8. Location – Is the restaurant hard to
find?
9. Other details – Do customers need
reservations? What are the hours? Is it crowded on weekends?
10. The “Bottom Line” – Overall Conclusion. Make a
couple of final comments and give the restaurant some type of “score” that will
help other people decide whether they want to go there or not.
11. Provide the address and telephone number at
the bottom of the review.
No comments:
Post a Comment