Rice to Riches

I was on a Kozyshack bender this weekend. A four-pack down the hatch, foil seals licked clean; evidence recycled. A real puddin' head.

We all know and accept that Kozy's rice pudding is great stuff. So great, that it can become a problem. First you're buying a two-pack, then four packs and soon you're eating whole tubs. Just like an alcoholic before a work week, I went in for one final binge at 10:54 p.m. Sunday night. Someone mentioned the geeked-out Nolita spot, Rice to Riches. I waddled my rice-pudding engorged thighs over there to see if it could stand up to the Shack.

The rice pudding emporium has been open on Spring Street for a couple years now (joined, like yesterday, by a PinkBery next door.) Similar to an ice cream counter they offer dozens of flavors. Some ok, some gross and some pretty good. They have toppings – fruits, nuts and crouton-like poundcake squares. The "solo", at $5, is their single-serving option. The molded-plastic dish can hold a lot of rice pudding, but the real question is how much of their pudding do you really want?

Here's my pud with Rice to Riches: the fruity flavors (e.g. mango and banana) tasted fake, and if you're thinking this going to be like a yummy sticky-rice and mango thing, then you're going to be disappointed. Rice is too soupy. Kozy's rice-to-pudding ratio is much better, and that gives Kozy more structure and texture in your mouth. Lastly, even for glutonous me, I just couldn't finish a single serving at Rice to Riches. I felt like I was eating a bowl of banana-flavored snot by the end. (Ok, I ate the rest later at home. Because I like leftover snot.)

Here's the verdict: Kozy 1-Rice 0. It's not that Rice is that bad, but it's just Kozy is that good. Rice to Riches has the disease that many New York places have. It takes some perfectly good comfort food and tries to spruce it up into hipster gourmet. I like my rice puddin' just fine. It didn't need no sprucin'. Next you come around, I'll be on my make-believe porch, too fat to get off it, and spoonin' puddin' in my mouth. Delicious, grocery-store bought, pre-packaged rice pudding from The Kooz.

Where: 37 Spring Street, 212-274-0008

Special Massachusetts edition--CK Shanghai

As i write this, I'm lying on my bed in my hometown of Lexington, Massachusetts, where the lawns are well-manicured, the voters are reliably Democratic, and even the Dunkin Donuts' have a "colonial" look about them. Yesterday I returned from a week in utopian Martha's Vineyard, where the most exciting dining out experience I had (my family ate in most nights) was seeing Spike Lee at the local pizza joint. I was reminded of "Do The Right Thing", minus Radio Raheem and a trash can through the window. (Actually, I ate at a pretty good diner in MV, which I may deign to write about later this week.)

Anyway, dear reader, let me put this question to you: why can the best Chinese food I've ever eaten outside of London be found not in New York City, but in the small (even whiter and richer than Lexington) town of Wellesley, MA? WHY? Why can't CK Shanghai move next door to my house, dammit??

Sorry, I went a bit off the rails there. But good food should have the power to make you angry, I think. And CK Shanghai is damn good. It's not that the menu at this pleasantly laid out Cantonese (sorry, I wanted to sound like Zagat for a second) is that inventive, just that the quality of the ingredients must be light years beyond your standard Chinese restaurant. Everything I've eaten there, and I've been there four or five times now, has been excellent. My favorite is probably the classic crispy spicy shrimp, which is plesantly soft and succulent (mmm, food porn!). The tangerine crispy beef, double fried pan noodles, and vegetable dishers have all been winners, too. The appetizers, as always are just as good if not better than the main courses, from your standard spring rolls to pork dumplings. And for what feels like gourmet eating, the prices are extremely reasonable.

Roasting Plant

The other day another editor at Flavorpill commented on the awful-ness of New York coffee. He just arrived from Australia and was stating what every immigrant soon learns. Coffee sucks in New York. I have ultimately grown to secretly love deli coffee 'regular' full of sugar and cream and horsepiss-colored liquid. But that took me seven years to do - even then, it's really a hot beverage rather than a cup of coffee. Iced coffee from delis, is, a whole other topic. Today I am talking hot, delicious coffee.

My NorCal roots are strong and I usually french press a cup at home every morning before heading out. It's cheaper and way better than Starbucks, which I loathe though have been know to visit. I generally feel their coffee is crap - it's too thick and burnt to taste coffee and requires a gallon of cream to make it palatable.

And everyone from the Bay Area, at least, remininsces about Peet's and Mission Street burrittos. In a stroke of genius, my dad gave me 'Peet's Coffee of the Month' club for Christmas in 2005, which I managed to nurse out into late 2006. But a few weeks ago, I ground my final beans and let out a long sigh. Where was I going to my beans now? There are a few places that pass - Porto Rico in the East Village for one. But I needed the juice, the good stuff. Primo beans. God wanted me to find the Roasting Plant, so he set it in my path as I made my way up Orchard the other day. The man who started it, is quite frankly a little insane. Figures, he's an engineer from Boston and was one the 'Director of Profit Improvement' for Starbucks. Which makes me shudder. But he made a good thing.

The whole place is like a Rube Goldberg mahcine, with pipes and whistles and bean shoots to roast the beans on site. It borders on being too precious, but eh, who cares. I got a half-pound of the house roast for about $7, not the cheapest coffee ever, but I am willing to pay for my drugs. I took it home and waited the suggested 24-hour 'settling' period before brewing my first cup.

Here's what is tastes like: It's roasted, but not burnt. Enough Arabica to be full and round in your mouth but some Central American in there for a little more kick. It tastes - like coffee! Not the roasting machine! It's spicy and peppery and chocolatey in all the right ways. Three cups of this and you'll have wings.

Where: 81 Orchard Street, at Broome, 212-775-7755

Grom

There is a vicious frozen yogurt craze happening on the streets on Manhattan. No fewer than three new, equally tempting fro-yo chains have opened up in the past year (Yogurberry, Pinkberry and Yolato). So where does that leave the real stuff - cream and eggs and all the rest? For starters, well over the $6/scoop mark.

Safely nestled among the ruling classes with glasses on the Upper West Side is the one-off Grom gelateria. They serve gelato, sorbet and granitas. They are from Italy. It is the Gucci of ice cream. Call in the rollers of big cigars! On Sunday, after a particularly harrowing screening of The Bourne Ultimatum (with Demi and Ashton seated just feet away), we spotted the line up. Twenty deep at 10:27 p.m. We waited, we scooped and we licked. Eh.

I have a lot of issues with Grom

1)It's on a dorky stretch of Broadway, bolstered only by the fact that if you are eating at Big Nick's or drinking at Yogi's, your kind is not welcome at Grom.

2)I don't like paying this much above 14th Street.

3)They are a wee-bit self-congratulating in their literature about how they are Slow Food medal winners, only use cage-free organic eggs, sugar milled by young virgins, etc. …

4)It's a creamy mess. If I wanted a milkshake I would go to a diner, if I wanted sugar I would eat a pixie-stick. It is, I say, too much of a good thing. I like to struggle a little to find the beauty of my frozen treats.

5)Save your money. Buy a Sponge Bob ice cream pop.

Where: 2165 Broadway, 646-290-7233

Vasconcellos

This is from my friend Jesse .... he's got A+ tastebuds, so I think we're safe.

Also, there is teensy-weensy dominican place in midtown that is worth visiting. The sign looks like they sell second hand heavy metal cassettes but this turns out not to be true. For 5 bucks you get a choice of beans (red, white, black or lentils) plus a choice of white rice or yellow rice and your choice of the meat or fish dishes that have been cooked up that day. Typically they include: pernil, goat, bacalao, king fish, beef stew and stewed chicken. Plus some good juices. The place is just a kitchen with about 8 bar stools on it. Yes, on it. I used to eat here 3 days a week when I worked in the area and now I miss it 3 days a week. Perfect place for a hearty weekday lunch. And character abundant.

Where: 313 West 37th Street

Resto

After New York Magazine wrote that Resto had the "burger of the year," and posted an appetizing picture, I had to try it out. So, the other day, after a rather stressful day partly caused by the New York transit system being brought to its knees by a fucking rainstorm, I decided to treat myself by heading up to 29th St. and eating alone (something I've been known to do).

The place was crowded for a Tuesday night, and I had to wait a while for a seat to open up at the bar. The flamboyant maitre'd told me to stand in a specific place where he thought one would open up, so I perched awkwardly next to two towering bankers (or part of that species, at least) who were discussing domestic matters and, later, the new Bourne movie (one of them had tried reading the Robert Ludlum books and complained that they were "too wordy.") When a third pal appeared, the giant at the bar graciously offered me his seat at the bar so I could sit down and eat, and my opinion of the trio improved immediately.

Anyway, the place was loud but convivial, and there was a pleasing selection of (expensive) Belgian beers on tap, this being a Belgian restaurant. As for the star attraction, the burger, it was...well, good. Nothing out of this world. You can blame the NYC hype machine for that, I guess. My main complaint was that the bun was Mcdonalds-y...a high class burger like this should have a toasted bun made of high quality bread. This one seemed average at best. Also, when I ordered the burger, the waiter (who admittedly, was the bartender for me) didn't even ask how I wanted it cooked. The rest of the ingredients--gruyere, pickles, the mayo they provided--were good, though lacking in onions or the option of mushrooms (a burger standby for me). Strangely, the pickles proved to be the highlight, which I can't say for any burger I've had before.

Suba or An Open Letter to Frank Bruni

Frank Bruni gave Suba - a Spanish-y type place on Ludlow, deep in the heart of hipster Disneyland - two stars this week. He prefaced his review with a very sad story of culinary triumph over tragedy, namely chef Seamus Mullen's battle with rheumatoid arthritis while still managing to run a downtown hot spot. So that slightly dampens about what I am about to say next: Suba is one of the worst restaurants I have ever been too. Mr. Bruni! They KNOW WHO YOU ARE and of course made you something wonderful and worthy of your overwritten prose. For the rest of us, here's what you can really expect. I have been to Suba on two recent occasions, in early May and again in late July. Both times I sat in the beautiful but under-ventilated subterranean room, not in the splish splash room, where the menu warns you they are not responsible for your shit falling into the open pools of water. The bathrooms - also a telltale of a restaurant's general quality - were smelly and messy.

On our first visit the service was intermittently rude and haughty from the maitre'd and just erratic and bad from the server, who forgot dishes and drinks, got orders wrong, had a badditude, etc...we had much better service on our second visit, when we went as a group and the server deftly dealt with our group of 10.

However, for the price points - $10 to $15 for a small tapas - you need to expect greatness from Suba. And the food quite simply was not good. On our Saturday night group dinner the server informed us they were out of a number of items, including the crispy calamari and lamb meatballs, which were two of the most appealing tapas selections. We ordered a poached farm egg, the crudo - which the server forgot - the cod fish jowls and an entree of arroz negro ($26) to share between two people. Nothing was served at an appropriate temperature or really had any taste. It looked ok - but everything tasted bland. The one stand out was the deliciously fatty cod jowls. The arroz negro was especially disappointing - too sticky and dense and was flavorless, even with a squirt of sea urchin on top (one bite of flavor a full entree does not make.) As our party finished there was a call to jaunt over to the creperie, "To finally get something to eat."

Sorry, Mr. Bruni, you've been had. In comparison to my lovely recent dinner at The Modern Cafe, which is similar in tone, structure and ambiance, Suba is a disaster. Dinner dollars aren't cheap and Suba is hugely disappointing - the clientele also, I should point out, seem to be a hodge podge of cocky young bankers and the anorexics who love them.

Where: 109 Ludlow Street, 212-982-5714

Pinkberry

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold your horses. I didn't actually get to eat at the dingle-berry. Just take a look at that picture. See how long that line is? Waiting in that kind of line is reserved only for special occasions, like peeing and Justin Timberlake tickets. It's freaking frozen yogurt! Ok, it is clearly a notch about Tasti-D-Lite (bleck. who eats that?) and I did have a moment of fro-yo zen when I tried pinkberry in Los Angeles last Spring in Japantown. But, this line freaks me out. I let those Pilobus-loving spoonfuls line up on their own. I heard a rumor there's one in Koreatown. Will investigate promptly.

Where:170 8th Ave, (212) 488-2510

Go! Go! Curry

The other day I found myself in one of my least favorite areas of New York--The Garment District, including Herald Square and environs. Though I enjoy Lazzara's Pizza Cafe on 38th St., the area is seriously lacking in non-chain food options compared to most of the rest of NYC. Not to mention the oppressive crowds around Penn Station and the whole 34th St. corridor.

If I ever find myself working in this hellscape, I will definitely frequent the diamond in the rough I visited the other day--Go! Go! Curry. This is a small outlet of a popular Japanese chain that, bizarrely enough, is centered around Yankees left fielder Hideki Matsui. Go means "five" in Japanese, and 55 is Matsui's number. The last four digits of the place's phone number are 5, and it opens at 10:55 and closes at 9:55. It was written up in both New York Magazine and Time Out New York's "Cheap Eats" issues in the last couple weeks--I discovered it in the former's pages, where I learned the aforementioned information about the obsession with "5." The specialty at Go! Go! Curry is a black gloppish substance upon which rice and toppings of your choice are mixed. The glop ounds kind of gross, but it's actually pretty zesty. The menu, which incorporates pork, chicken, shrimp, and possibly something else, includes "single, "double," "triple," and "grand slam"--did I mention there's a baseball theme? I chose the fried pork cutlets to go over the curry, and those succulent cutlets haunted my daydreams for days after I ate them. Always a sign of a good meal.

The decor, other than Matsui articles all over the walls, is bright and inviting, and the woman at the counter was charmingly overfriendly and even cautioned me against ordering too plain a dish when I initially went with the most spare option on the menu (if she hadn't spoken up, I wouldn't have feasted on the pork).

In the end, for just over 10 dollars--or clams, or bones, or whatever you call them--I enjoyed a memorable lunch in the midst of a culinary wasteland. Huzzah!

Where: 273 W. 38th St., (212) 730-5555

Requsite seizure-inducing website: http://www.gogocurryusa.com