餐厅评论: Babu Ji and Dirt Candy
在许多印度餐厅around the city, chefs tend to be ghostly, anonymous figures who rarely poke their heads out of the kitchen door. But at his boisterous new Alphabet City establishment,Babu Ji杰西辛格,他来到东村通过Melbourne and Punjab, is a constant presence in his dining room, grinning, circulating among the tables, cheerfully suggesting dishes in his soft Aussie twang. As designed by Singh’s wife (and co-owner), Jennifer, the room exudes a sense of conviviality too. The walls are decorated with big photos of assortedbabujis(“honored father” or respected elder in Hindi) sporting eccentric handlebar mustaches and vividly colored sequined coats. A stuffed peacock sits above the beer-and-wine cooler, and when I asked for a beer to go with my curry, the waiter instructed me in a cheerful voice to go to the cooler and choose it myself.
Babu Ji的一页菜单具有类似的抓斗质量。有经典的印度街小吃的高架版本可以放牧（尝试撒上石榴种子的帕帕迪碎屑，以及酥脆的gol gappa装满了三个酸辣酱），用厚悬挂的酸奶制成的胖鸡皮（“ Yoghurt kebab”（Yoghurt kebab'用咖喱叶和芥末籽调味的土豆碎球，并放在菠萝酱池中，散发着卷茴香和薄荷（出色的Batata Vada）。Singh prepares his succulent version of tandoori chicken off the bone (it’s served as an appetizer with mango salsa), and when we ordered the classic goat curry (the recipe comes from Singh’s home village in Punjab), the soft, bone-in chunks of goat were garnished with bits of greenery from the Union Square market and a handful of fresh blackberries.
坚定的印度食品传统主义者可能会用这些花朵般的触摸来嘲笑，但普拉特女士没有像一个狂热的少年一样在Babu ji吃晚饭。“You’d better give this place three stars,” she cried between bites of tandoori-charred rainbow trout (served whole, with a drizzling of ginger and honey) and the predictably lustrous butter chicken, which Singh and his cooks prepare with milk and fenugreek folded with fried shallots, tomatoes, and generous chunks of free-range bird from Murray’s. The Long Island scallops in my copper pot of slightly oversweet scallop coconut curry were as big and soft as marshmallows, and the spinach in the densely green, garlic-infused bowl of palak paneer, that old curry-house warhorse, tasted like it had been plucked that morning from a nearby rooftop garden and prepared in the home kitchen of some local Alphabet City nabob.
自Babu ji打开以来，厨房或多或少都处于紧张状态（“这里和印度火车站一样响亮”是辛格喜欢对他的客人大喊大叫的事情之一），它在某些菜肴中显示出来。胖果阿风格的猪肚Vindaloo可能会咬更多的东西，我水羊肉乔什（Rogan Josh）的羊肉块和硫化橡胶一样坚硬。但是，您可以用黄油，脆脆的naan和蓬松的房子basmati大米掩盖这些偶尔的不幸，并覆盖着蓬松的房子basmati米饭，这些米饭是卷茴香和柠檬的调味。无论您做什么，都为甜点留下了一个空间，只有两个。The wonderful, pistachio-flecked condensed-milk kulfi gets all the press, but the dish we couldn’t stop nattering about was the gulab jamun, which combines the softness of just-baked sponge cake with the focused, sinfully addictive qualities of a first-rate doughnut hole.
素食主义者应该to be a sensitive, retiring bunch, but everything about Amanda Cohen’s brassy new reboot of her seminal veggie establishment,Dirt Candy, screams out for attention. There’s the glittery sequined signage on the Allen Street façade, which reminded one of my guests of something you might see above a popular souvenir store at the mouth of a well-traveled national park. There’s the Vegas-like color scheme, which includes chairs covered in white人造leather and a red banquette along the walls. There’s the great Cheesecake Factory-size menu, which lists each dish in a different big-letter font and contains all sorts of dizzying information on the back, including how many cases of broccoli are used weekly at the restaurant (16) and how many “consultants” were employed in launching it (nine).
Some veggie formulations feel more overworked than others, but after much public hand-wringing on Cohen’s part, the consultants seem to have more or less done their jobs. I didn’t mind the swampy green kale matzo-ball soup (spiked with okra and galangal), or the semi-spicy mapo eggplant, or even the brightly colored monkey bread, served, for extra effect, in a small flowerpot. I won’t be reordering the $28 “corn boil” (which requires you to eat a lot of slippery roughage wearing a plastic bib), but Cohen’s famous tomato cake with smoked feta is almost worth a special trip. The cocktail list is refreshingly unpretentious for a potentially pretentious vegetarian restaurant (and, at $13 for your Dark and Stormy, refreshingly priced), and with some exceptions so are the desserts, in particular the carrot pie, which is capped with a twirling meringue top and tastes a little like oranges if you eat it with your eyes shut.
Babu Ji
175 Ave. B，第11街；212-951-1082;babujinyc.com
打开：星期二至星期五晚餐，周六和周日早午餐和晚餐。
价格：$ 4至25美元。
理想餐：Batata Vada，Tandoori鸡肉，黄油鸡和/或山羊咖喱，Basmati大米和Naan篮子，Kulfi。
Note:At $50 per head, the chef’s-table option (“eat like a babu ji”) is one of the better tasting-menu deals in town.
便笺：One hearty star for the cheerful vibe and another for Singh’s elegant home-style cooking.
Dirt Candy
86 Allen St., nr. Broome St.; 212-228-7732;dirtcandynyc.com
打开：星期二至周六共进晚餐。
价格：$ 2至28美元。
理想餐：Kale matzo-ball soup and/or tomato cake (with a side of hush puppies), mapo eggplant, carrot meringue pie.
Note:Dirt Candy is a no-tipping establishment, and everyone (the customer, the cooks, the front-of-the-house staff) is the better for it.
便笺：一颗健壮的恒星，是最好的新蔬菜舒适食品烹饪。
*This article appears in the September 7, 2015 issue of纽约杂志.
