Another serious import
Another serious import
Sip & Guzzle, Chambers Street Wines, best Manhattan wine shops, Penn Platform, Freedom Plaza, Dagon, NJ steakhouse, MORE
RESTAURANTS • First Word
Make mine a double
The contrast between the two spaces at month-old Greenwich Village bar concept Sip & Guzzle couldn’t be more stark. Upstairs, in the space that once housed Cornelia Street Cafe: a classic American saloon vibe, brick walls adorned with paintings and tchotchkes, a bar running the length of one room (above), the other room filled with tables for drinking and eating. This is, in the parlance of the house, Guzzle.
Downstairs, find a subterranean cocktail den. With a sliding wooden door to enter the room, and jazz music playing at a very reasonable volume, it’s instant transport to Tokyo. Consider a seat at one of the low tables, or at the five-seat bar at the back of the room, where mixologists work magic. This is Sip.
Tracking the lineage of the concept (which does in fact come to NYC by way of Japan) and the mixologists working each of the spaces (including alums of many great NYC cocktail bars) requires an intensity of focus that could obscure the fact that both of these venues are extremely exciting spots, making for two (or is it really one?) great additions to the NYC bar (or is it restaurant?) scene.
On a recent night, we started upstairs at one of the two-tops in the packed Guzzle dining room. To drink, a spicy Paloma with a black lava salted rim, and a pecan old-fashioned, the pecan set atop the top of a single giant ice cube. Neither could be mistaken for anything other than a Paloma or an old fashioned, yet both drinks’ twists did nothing less than elevate them subtly into greatness. In other words, the ideal “update” of a classic cocktail.
The first food to hit our table was an instant showstopper: a long twisted strand of fried mochi, coated in (laced with?) housemade nacho powder, the uncanny Doritoesque flavor delivered via textures both chewy and crunchy. Odd, and outstanding. Next, two “bikinis,” wafer-thin waffle sandwiches filled with melted compté cheese ganache, jamon Iberico, and (for an $18-per supplement), shaved périgord black truffle, instantly my frontrunner for best bite of 2024.
When our server brought us two gloves and a large pair of scissors for our third course, electric chicken, I realized something amusing about dining at Guzzle: There are no utensils to be seen. Instead, pick the big piece of fried chicken up with your glove hand and cut it into bite-size servings with the scissors, then taste a tingly delight. And finally, further showcasing chef Mike Bagale’s sense of humor, a build-your-own dish of extremely elevated pork belly tacos, with tiny umeboshi tortillas made by Williamsburg’s Sobre Masa.
Downstairs at Sip (above) for a nightcap and dessert, we settled into two bar seats, the older couple to our right digging into a large serving of golden osetra caviar, served with puffed chicken skin ($165 per, as befits the more elevated menu at Sip, where food is also by Bagale and vintage silverware is indeed provided). We opted for a special dessert new to the menu, a crown melon parfait, served with a chalice of 1986 Château d’Yquem not to be sipped but rather poured onto the dessert itself. Over the top, and not to be forgotten. –Lockhart Steele
→ Sip & Guzzle (Greenwich Village) • 29 Cornelia St. • Reserve • Walk-ins welcome.
NYC RESTAURANT LINKS: More from Frog Club’s opening week, including first confirmed ‘Kiss the Chef’ (earlier) • Appreciating a new-to-the-menu vegan treat at East Willamsburg’s Win Son Bakery • NYC’s 50 most iconic cocktail bars for 2024, per Robert Simonson • Is the influx of NYC bars helping or hindering D.C.’s cocktail scene? • The wine aeration industrial complex will not rest.
WORK • Built Environment
Rendering a new reality
It’s a modern wonder that cities as developed as New York still have the capacity for major transformations — projects that reorient perspectives, that breathe new life into the built environment.
Two renderings this week hit that mark. It’s possible neither will make it into reality, or, if they do, won’t meet the promise of the designs on the page. But, for now, promise is enough on a cold February morning.
The first: an updated prospect for the old Hotel Pennsylvania lot, part of Vornado’s Penn Station redevelopment plan. Instead of a new office tower, new plans call for The Penn Platform (above), “an 80,000 square-foot space for U.S. Open tennis matches, New York Fashion Week events, and a digital billboard measuring 10 stories high.” Now we’re talking.
Second: Across town, Bjarke Engels has unveiled his firm’s designs (above) for a proposed casino site on the East River. The skyline-altering concept includes a three-block green space, two residential towers, a museum, and two new hotels — for the first NYC Banyan Tree and Mohegan, which would also operate the casino — connected by a cantilevered skybridge. The whole site, which abuts the UN, is dubbed Freedom Plaza. The full set of renderings are worth a spin. –Josh Albertson
WORK LINKS: Top broker Bob Knakal out at JLL days after NYT profile • Meta to give up 275k SF at 770 Broadway • OpenAI is on the hunt for a New York City office • Times Square, Chelsea top nabes for 2023 commercial sales • How to erect a modular NYC apartment building in one day • Tech leaders fled San Francisco during the pandemic. Now, they’re coming back.
WORK • Tuesday Routine
Bottle service and a good cry
ARI BOKOVZA • chef/partner • Dagon & Acadia
Neighborhood you work in: Upper West Side/Midtown
It’s Tuesday morning, where are you working?
From 6am-7am, my first job is to hit the gym. This sets the tone: If I don’t do it, I end up feeling like a lazy piece of garbage for the rest of the day. Just like work, you have to show up every day regardless of how you’re feeling — no excuses.
At 7am, my phone rings. No need to look at the caller ID. It’s my wife calling to tell me that Ayla (our 10-month-old) is up and ready to eat. I heat her bottle, throw on some Netflix or the news and chow time with my little mama is on. After play time, and a diaper change, it’s off to work.
I’ll get to Acadia, our new Midtown restaurant that opened a couple months ago, by about 10am. I do a quick line check as we recently opened for lunch, making a point to say hello to the entire staff with a fist bump. (Every chef that I’ve both worked for and respect has always made a point of this — showing respect to the staff.) Then I’m in the office checking emails and looking at the numbers from the weekend.
What’s the Tuesday morning scene at your workplace?
Heavy prep day happening downstairs, especially if we had a busy weekend and got cleaned out of everything. My sous chef Victor is usually in full panic mode as either a cook didn’t show or a purveyor is running late. I try to ease his tension, but he’d probably say I just add to his stress!
What’s on the agenda for today?
This is literally copy/pasted from my phone:
Consolidate prep/work load. (Anytime you open a new restaurant, there are always kinks that need to be tweaked, or recipes that can be simplified for mass production. You want to cook within your means. If a recipe is too time consuming or labor intensive — as many of mine are — we end up falling behind.)
Check with butcher Chuck about a new dish. (It’s sort of a riff on a pasta bolognese, with a North African flair.)
Check payroll. Check food cost. Cry. (With any opening, payroll and food cost are always extremely high.)
Spring veg planning. (We have a section of our menu dedicated to rotisserie roasted vegetables. Right now, it's beets, cauliflower, squash, and carrots. But spring always creeps up.)
What’s for lunch?
Last week, I took a trip to Astoria and hit my favorite street meat spot, King Souvlaki. Two skewers with lemon, hot sauce, salt and pepper, and fries — the only fries on the planet that are not served crispy, yet are still addictive. I also love lunch at Great NY Noodletown, a Chinatown classic, and Leibman’s Deli in the Bronx (we serve their pastrami for lunch — in my humble opinion, it's the best in New York).
Any plans tonight?
If I'm taking my wife out, Sake Bar Hagi on West 51st is always at the top of my list. Raw octopus with mountain yam is a textural mindfuck — when you take the first bite, you’re not sure if you want to spit it out or savor it, then after a couple minutes, you realize it’s genius and you end up taking smaller bites just to make it last. If I’m in the mood for a good steak and we're across the river, we will go to the iconic River Palm Terrace in Edgewater, NJ. The service is top notch, the vibe is like walking into a time warp. Finally, Marea holds a special place in my heart for the fusilli with octopus and bone marrow.
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GOODS & SERVICES • FOUND Shop
Tribeca terroir
Last month, one of Manhattan’s best wine stores relocated out of its longtime home at 148 Chambers St. in Tribeca three blocks east, to 79 Chambers St. (above). What the new Chambers Street Wines gives up in retail space size (and, to some degree, charm), it wins back by co-locating with the shop’s longtime warehouse, which allows for greater onsite selection.
A recent visit found the new location’s ground floor up and running, towering shelves filled with well-displayed bottles stretching deep into the narrow store, team members busy restocking. (A downstairs retail space remains under construction.)
Chambers Street Wines specializes in organic and biodynamic wines, particularly from the old world. With red snapper on the menu for dinner, I opted for a bottle of white wine from a personal favorite, cult biodynamic Sicilian winemaker Frank Cornelissen, a 2021 Munjebel ($54) — fruitier than one might expect from grapes grown in volcanic soil, and absolutely delicious.
The store delivers free of charge for all orders below Canal Street, and free to the rest of Manhattan and Brooklyn for orders of $175+ and $200+, respectively. National shipping via FedEx is also available for those far beyond the bounds of the triangle below Canal. –Lockhart Steele
→ Shop: Chambers Street Wines (Tribeca) • 79 Chambers St. • 10% case discount.
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GOODS & SERVICES • The Nines