PLEASE DON'T TELL

PLEASE DON'T TELL

113 St. Marks Place,
New York, NY 10009
(212) 614-0386

Hidden behind a secret door lies one of New York's most highly regarded bars. Please Don't Tell, or PDT, exists as an homage to Prohibition-era speakeasies. If no one told you it was there, you'd never know. There's barely a webpage. To get in, you call the number above and hope there's room. There's no sign, no plaque, no bouncer. The front door sits inside of an adjacent store (Crif Dogs hot dogs) and is camouflaged as a phone booth. Once inside the booth, you lift the receiver, hit the call button, and wait for the person on the other side to let you in. While the dress code at PDT is casual, the long copper bar, bare brick walls, and stuffed jackalopes evoke flashbacks to a time when even a homeless guy wore a suit.

PDT has all of about thirty seats, including the bar, and this means that it fills up fast. You have to make reservations and can only make them the day of, starting at 3:00 PM. This particular Saturday, by the time I got through the busy signals, it wasn't yet 3:20 and they were booked solid past midnight. And by the way, even though Bro and I got a reservation for a table, we still found ourselves sitting at the bar. Actually, we were glad to sit where we did. There was more light and we could watch the bartender, a tall, thin British bloke do his thing. It was like being in an episode of Poirot without the guy next to you getting mysteriously killed.

Although PDT is small, it's still relatively loud. Besides the Pink Floyd playing from the stereo, sound carries here. Don't think it's like a club where you have to yell for the person you're with to hear you, but you won't feel obligated to whisper.

PDT makes drinks the old fashioned way. They're a fan of bitters and don't do much in the way of fruit juices or new-fangled liqueurs. When I asked for something coffee-ish, but without Kahlua, I got the response "We don't do Kahlua." They do, however, do St. Germain elderflower liqueur. I know. I never heard of it either. Many of PDT's drinks are egg-themed, something that the vast majority of bars out there have no concept of. Virtually everything is top shelf. The generic stuff doesn't exist. I think the cheapest whiskey they had was Maker's Mark, and that ain't cheap.

That PDT was crowded even at 2am hardly surprises me. I mean, it's New York on a Saturday. But beyond that, once you're here you don't want to leave. It's comfortable, it's not prohibitively expensive, you can sit and talk with friends or your date without trying to impress anyone and you feel totally cool being just little ol' you. Given how tight it is, you might think that you'd become claustrophobic. I am willing to say that such a feeling probably won't happen. It almost feels like a big comfy blanket you drink in.

The drinks we had while we were there were but some of a long list of possibilities available to those who can read a menu or have an imagination. I'll list them briefly , but I won't get deep into any deep descriptions or give you much of my opinion.

The Coffee Cocktail, which has no coffee, but does have egg, was creamy and frothy and actually does taste like a coffee with too much milk in it. The No. 8, a tangy, bitter whiskey drink. Falling Leaves was a bitter spiced pink cocktail topped off with a star anise garnish. Finally, the Parkside Fizz was the best of the bunch, if only because it was the most playful, was like a twist on my old favorite, the mojito.

PDT does have a beer selection and we ended the night with two modest glasses of Captain Lawrence IPA before heading to the West Village, thusly giving our seats at the bar to another two souls in need of libation.

Since PDT is technically an offshoot of Crif Dog, and you enter not-so-clandestinely through the Crif Dog phone booth, Crif Dog hot dogs are the available solid sustenance. A little stainless steel hot dog door behind the bar opens and through it the Crif Dog cooks pass the dogs to the bartender.

Cocktails are $12 each, unless they're the premium ones. Then they cost $22. Beer is $5 per (small) glass.

shhhh...

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eateryROW: forestHILLS

eateryROW: forestHILLS
eateryrowforesthills.blogspot.com

To many of you, this post will mean very little. To many more, it will mean even less.

If you read this blog at all, you can see that I have tried to spread myself across the city as much as possible. I admit that Staten Island and the Bronx have been thus far neglected and that I need to spend more time in Brooklyn, but I seriously try not to focus on only one or two neighborhoods.

And now, hoping not to sound like a hypocrite, I am announcing a spinoff blog specifically for the area around which I am currently home-based: Forest Hills, Queens. You should come and visit and shop and eat.

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IL BAMBINO

IL BAMBINO
34-08 31st Avenue
Astoria, NY 11106
(718) 626-0087

Finding a place to eat in this city, if you're not looking to spend an arm and a leg, should be as easy as pie. And actually, it is. Just don't go looking for help in the major publications (you know who I mean), which are notoriously focused on the trendy or the pricey. If a celebrity doesn't co-own the place or eat there daily, they couldn't care less. That's fine because it doesn't sell magazines or raise your Google rank to talk about places that don't conjure up a fantasy, but it doesn't do the rest of us much good to imply that we might as well just find the nearest Kennedy Fried Chicken and call that our night out.

This time around, I headed back to D's turf of Astoria where we checked out Il Bambino, an Italian tapas and panini restaurant. It's not trendy. It's hardly fancy. For all I know, celebrities run from this place like it were haunted. And it's got some great food. Shhhhh. Don't tell.

One thing that helps keep your feast dirt-assed-cheap is that Il Bambino is BYOB. So even with the corking fee, it's totally affordable. Speaking of which, I call "bullshit" on the corking fee. Since the guy doesn't open your bottle, pour your wine, or top off your glass when you're getting low, this fee was really just a corkscrew rental.

It's tapas and all of the dishes are small. But you're supposed to order and bunch and share them. So let's get to it.

The first thing we did was order a Smoked Tomato Soup. It's served with an absolutely amazing garlic pesto bread and tastes almost like a smoky vodka sauce. This was easily my least favorite dish and I'm glad we got it over with the first. That tells you something about the rest of the meal, since I thought the soup was actually very good. Anyway, next we started in on the solid foods. The first of the numerous plates we ordered was Carpaccio of Brasaola, with baby arugula, manchego and lemon aioli. This cured beef salad was incredible. It's not something I'd really ever have as a staple of my diet, but the paper thin beef and cold salad atop it seemed perfectly fitted to this warm early evening. All of the dishes we ordered, except for the panini, were cold. Keep that in mind as you decide if cold dishes of ultra-thin meats, loads of cheese and cold veggies are for you.

I really liked the Manchega and Membrillo we ordered, but almost wished we saved it until last. It was almost dessert sweet; a fluffly sweet jam and cheese. And the Prosciutto Di Parma, served with mozzarella, and a sundried tomato pesto was excellent, too. Finally, the final small plate, the Truffle Egg With Shaved Speck. Definitely for the egg people at the table, this almost egg-salady dish with speck (smoked cured ham), served on a cracker was perhaps the weakest of the dishes, but I like egg so can still recommend it. By the way, I don't mean to underwrite the experiences of eating these dishes, but I feel that it's silly to bash you over the head with overblown statements of amazingness. I liked it and I think you will too. If you're tired of the typical red sauce Italian places (and who isn't?), I suggest you come here.

Half of Il Bambino's menu is panini. According to their sign, it's kinda their thing. Since we wanted to be able to divide everything amongst four people, we were hesitant about ordering paninis. This was probably a mistake, since they're big enough that we could have divided them. I know this because, feeling like we should have something hot, we did decide to order one, the Prosciutto Panini (there's a lot more cured meat than you think in Italy). Inside was prosciutto, a gorgonzola dolche, and a fig spread. I was not really a fan. It was sweet, but bitter at the same time. I can't really endorse this one. But given how much I liked the rest of the food, I'd be more than willing to guess that this was just an unlucky menu choice on my part. Especially given the boastful sign...



A quick note. It just so happens that everyting we ordered was easily dived into four parts so that all of us could try everything.



Two soups, one panini and four small plates, plus a $5 corking fee came $60 even, including tax and tip.

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MAX BRENNER CHOCOLATE BAR

MAX BRENNER CHOCOLATE BAR

841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
(212) 388-0030

I have to be blunt. I find Max Brenner's tagline "Chocolate by the Bald Man" irritating, to say the least. First, it presumes that I know who "the Bald Man" is (I don't, but somehow I doubt it's Kojak) and that he doesn't normally do chocolate, so I should ready myself for a treat. Second, it presumes that anyone would think that having a bald chef could possibly matter to their dining experience. It doesn't. The logo used to be "Chocolate Is Good For You", but some pain-in-the-ass, I'm-a-better-mom-than-you types, wringing their hands sobbing "Think of the children!" probably killed that one.

Anyway, pet peeves about dumb subheaders aside, Max Brenner's is one of the better dessert places around, especially if you're looking for a certain party vibe. And yeah, yeah. They have food too. Who cares? No ones going here for the chicken fingers.

Myself, D, and two friends wound up here one Saturday evening pretty close to midnight and still had to wait a half hour for a table. That gives you an idea of how packed this place gets. And it ain't small. If you don't want to wait for a long time on a weekend, you can either be very lucky or show up at 1am.

Chocolate, obviously, is the name of the game here. The front entrance area is a chocolate store with big stirring chocolate vats and shelves of chocolate candy. You can buy some to nosh on while you wait for your table, but I don't suggest you fill up on junk food before dessert.

We were all craving something desserty, having bounced across the city all night long, from Queens to Manhattan, tapas place to wine bar. Now we wanted sweet. And we wanted liquor. Max Brenner fit the bill as a dessert place that I knew also served drinks.

Speaking of which, the cocktail list was the first thing I looked for. And sweet desserts mean sweet cocktails. Unless you were like someone at our table and decide to order, of all things, a Pinot Noir. Don't ask me the vineyard. That particular choice of hooch aside, the rest of our drinks were all pretty damn good. I ordered a Brazilian Mocha Martini, which is roughly the closest thing you can get to a melted alcoholic chocolate bar without marinating a Hersey bar in a bowl of vodka. D got the Caribbean Mood Martini, an orange-mango screwdriver on steroids. And one of her friends picked out the Strawberry Mojito. Ahh... when you marry the deliciousness of a strawberry to the deliciousness of a mojito, you know you're in for something good.

We nursed these guys until our desserts came. And when they did, my God were they rich.

My entree, if you can really call it that, was the Munchies Waffles, two four inch waffles coated in whipped cream, topped with a scoop of vanilla and dark chocolate, candied hazelnuts, crunchy chocolate wafer balls and warm chocolate syrup. I'm a huge fan of waffles. I grew up on waffles. In fact, I was eating waffles way before I even tasted pancake. These were some good waffles. My only suggestion (and it's not a complaint) is that they serve this dish with maple syrup (not that fake Aunt Jemima crap). I followed it up with half of a Chocolate Pizza with Peanut Butter. Cookie-like dough, topped in chocolate syrup, marshmallow, candied hazelnuts and chocolate chunks. Seriously, this is enough for two provided you order nothing else. It's that heavy and sweet. Don't get me wrong, it tastes good. But, divided among four people, it still wasn't finished.

D chose the Eskimo Cone, two scoops of ice cream in a crispy sugared waffle cone, served with warm chocolate sauce, crunchy wafer balls and candied hazelnut. This is basically an ice cream cone in a stand. Yummy, for sure, but not something you can't get somewhere else. We also ordered a Hazelnut Cream Crepe, which I liked a lot. Actually, I don't think I've ever actually disliked anything here. The hazelnut crepe came stuffed with chocolate and hazelnut creama, toppped with ice cream, toffee coated banana, vanilla sauce and crunchy hazelnut bits. Finally came the Max's Three Layer Chocolate Concoction with Cookies and Peanut Butter. It is just like it sounds, but served in a beaker: chocolate cream, Oreo cookies, peanut butter, white chocolate and whipped cream. Plus, it came with biscotti. Basically, if you wanted to toss your week of eating salads and miso soup for lunch down the toilet, this is the way to go. I didn't taste it, but I'm sure it was good. How could it be bad?

Our five desserts and three cocktails and a pinot noir came to $110 with tax and tip.

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SAIGON GRILL

SAIGON GRILL

620 Amsterdam Avenue

New York, NY 10024

(212) 875-9072

I'm always on the lookout for a new restaurant. And the more famous the restaurant, the more likely it is that someone will actually bother to read this digital rag. So along comes Mr. Dogz with Saigon Grill. While some places, like Lucky Cheng's, are famous for their sexuality, vibe and kitch, and others, like Per Se, are famous for their food, ludicrous prices and celebrity clientele, Saigon Grill is famous for (allegedly) treating its employees like something scraped off a zookeeper's shoe. But hey, fame is fame, right? Didn't a celebrity once say "speak ill of me, but speak of me" in reference to her tabloid-fodder life?

The Upper West Side is replete with affordable dining options. They tend to be less trendy and more casual. Less about the presentation and more about the food. More inexpensive than the average bear. So Saigon Grill, on Amsterdam Avenue, was just what the wallet ordered. It was not, I regret to say, the most satisfying prescription.



Saigon Grill is something of an odd duck. On the one hand, it looks like it used to be an old fashioned steakhouse. The room is dark, lit only by dimly glowing globes hanging from the ceiling. The molding on the walls are a dark wood, as are the tables and booths. Some of the walls that separate the dining areas are glass. But on the other hand, it's a diner. A Vietnamese diner the same way that Jackson Diner is an Indian one. The chairs are cheap, the napkins are paper, the service is brusk, and there are those sugar packet organizer thingies on the table.

Like I said, the service needs some improvement. The place is massive and it was packed. It easily has 100 tables spanning three or four dining areas. Divide about three waiters amongst the crowd, and about a dozen servers whose sole function is to pour water and clear tables (who speak zero English), and there brewed a bit of frustration within me. When our dishes were being delivered, they were delivered one at a time and a few minutes apart. We thought that they'd forgotten our order. We'd sit and stare at this one lonely plate on the table, hoping that its friend would arrive so we could dig in. Very sloppy.

But what were those orders?

Mr. Dogz had the Goi Cuon Tom, a shrimp summer roll. It's a cold vegetarian roll, filled with all sorts of goodies in a lettuce wrap and served with a plum sauce. This was great. In the summer, I can see this as the perfect meal starter on a hot day. Food critic that I pretend to be, I could simply not resist the Appetizer Platter for One. I'll break it down into the four appetizers I'd have had should I have everything piecemeal. Cha Gio, a crispy fried spring roll with a pork, shrimp, mushroom puree. I wasn't expecting the puree texture inside, but it worked and was very tasty. I'd order this again. Up next was the also very good Cha Gio Chay, a vegetarian spring roll. This was a completely different taste than the first spring roll was but was equally as good. This appetizer came with two dipping sauces, a sweet one and a peanut one. Both were excellently complimentary of this dish. The third appetizer on the plate was Chao Tom, a shrimp and a stick of sugar cane coated in batter and deep fried. I liked it. I was very different and I don't think I'd make a steady diet of it, especially with the sugar cane being so chewy, but I'd certainly recommend it and I'd certainly order it again. Up next are two standards that everyone who wants to try Vietnamese food orders so they can say they ate it but didn't have to stray too far from their American palate. The Bo Nuong Sate (grilled beef on a skewer with peanuts and a peanut sauce) and the Ga Nuong Sate (grilled chicken on a skewer with peanuts abd a peanut sauce). They were fine. But not more than fine. I wasn't drooling for more when I finished. Oh yeah, the appetizer also came with a little side salad.



The entrees we ordered, as I said, came numerous minutes apart for some reason. Once they did come, neither were especially impressive. Given the little red chili pepper picture next to each of our entrees on the menu, there was the implication that they were hot and spicy. In fact they weren't remotely so. I feel lied to. Had they not had that pepper symbol, I'd have ordered something else. Curry Bo was my dish. As implied by the name, it's a curry dish. I love curry. If I see curry on a menu, I always put it on the short list of things to pick. Hell, I ordered curry at Lounge 47, and that was a bar. But here, the taste was completely two dimensional. Dogz ordered the Basil Beef, which was better, but not by much. This dish was essentially beef with vegetables in a basil sauce. Both it and mine needed more flavor and felt like something that could have been spooned out a trough at a lunchtime hot salad bar buffet. One nice thing that the staff did was allow me to substitute the standard white or brown rice for the Coconut Sticky Rice at no charge. The best coconut sticky rice I've ever had was at a great place in the East Village called Blue Velvet 1929. It sadly went out of business a few years ago. This rice did not compare.



I may be alone here in my opinion about Saigon Grill. Mr. Dogz suggested the place and he said he usually likes what he gets. The people on Yelp seem to gravitate towards the good over the bad. Maybe if I lived nearby and wanted something that wasn't too expensive, but with the Upper West Side being such a trek for me, I can't legitimately see myself going out of my way again.

A beer, a sake, two appetizers, two entrees, and free tea at every table, plus tax and tip, rolled in at $58.75.

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MILLBROOK VINEYARDS

MILLBROOK VINEYARDS & WINERY
26 Wing Road
Millbrook, NY 12545
(845) 677-8383
(800) 662-WINE

I love wine. I love vineyards. I love road trips. So when I got a call from The Rents to check out a maple farm up in Dutchess County with them, I jumped at the chance, in part because I knew we could check out a vineyard or two in the Hudson Valley. We ended up only being able to go to one, but it was the one I have my most fond memories of. See, I graduated from a certain liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, about a half hour away. Ah, memories.

New York State is not exactly the first state that comes to mind when one thinks of American Wine. California, Oregon, Washington State. Those are the big names. But the Empire State is up next, fourth in wine production. Long Island's North and South Forks have vineyards (which I'll be headed to soon), as does the Finger Lakes, as does the Hudson Valley, where we were.

I'm not going to go into a history of the Millbrook Vineyard or who its owners are since you can get all that on the tour or at their website. I also don't particularly care. What I care about is the experience and the wine.

Experience-wise, the one problem I had was with the time of year I chose to go. It was a beautiful day, but a chilly late March isn't conducive to getting good photos of lush bushes awash in green leaves and grape bunches. Sorry folks. But we went on a tour, bought a few bottles of vino and got to wander around the grounds, which were beautiful. And they get only more so in warmer weather.

The wine Millbrook specializes in (at least at its New York Vineyard) is red. Dry red. Pinot Noirs, Merlots, Cabernet Francs. I bought all three. Unfortunately, there isn't any restaurant here so you'll have to check out a downstate Zagat guide for where to get something to eat. I speculated that a restaurant would do really well to our tour guide (who was really really nice, by the way), but he explained that they had tried one once and it didn't work out. That's sad. Each time I sipped the wines we tried, I pictured the steaks and ducks and stews and fish that they would have paired so well with. But it wasn't to be.

If you're a white wine person, Millbrook sells a Chardonnay and Tocai Fruliano, but the rest of their whites are from their California winery. No offense to California, but I was touring a New York vineyard and wasn't about to bother with those. A wine connoisseur, something I am most assuredly not, will try a wine and can pick out flavors that they feel the wine has buried deep within it alcoholic soul. Plums or blackberries or tobacco. I'm not quite that good. But I can taste the peach and vanilla tones in a white and the pepper and chocolate tones in a red. With the Millbrook wines, reds are peppery, and get more so as they get dryer and heavier. These are rich reds, heavy reds, and remind me more of French wine than the lighter ones from California. As for the whites, I usually pass on the Chardonnay in favor of a Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc. Millbrook was no exception, but they don't sell those other two. They do have Gewurtztraminer and Tocai Friuliano, which are light and sweet, but are dry enough to be tossed out of the dessert wine club. What I liked about both of these was that they don't coat your mouth in that oaky butter taste that Chardonnays are either loved or hated for doing.

In the summer, people come from far and wide and set up picnics, pounding back the wines they like most from inside the main building. I suggest you do too. Maybe bring a teeny barbecue grill. The grounds of Millbrook are gorgeous and, because of the hill the vineyard's on, on clear days you can see for miles down the valley. Above the wine rooms of the first floor, the vineyard hosts art shows in the summer and you can apparently reserve the whole place for weddings.

Over the past few years, I've started seeing Millbrook being sold in more and more wine shops here in the city, at least the ones with New York sections. Cheaper ones that focus on Yellow Tail, Berenger or other plastic cork wines, and ones that specialize in wine from specific regions (such as Spain only) would clearly not be where to go to find yourself a bottle.

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