Block party
Block party
Il Totano, Saga, Restaurant Yuu, Beefbar, Port Authority, Big Night, Father's Day reservations, MORE
RESTAURANTS • First Person
Better with age
With the city finally and fully in bloom, warm sunlight flooding through the trees and onto the townhouses, West 13th Street between Sixth and Seventh Aves is easily among New York’s finest blocks. My destination on a warm weekday evening last week: Il Totano, a new restaurant in the space Flex Mussels held since the aughts. At the stove, another throwback to that decade: chef Harold Dieterle.
To New York City restaurant goers (and reality TV fans) of a certain generation, Dieterle needs no introduction. For everyone else: In 2006, he won the first-ever season of Top Chef at the age of 28, then leveraged his new-found fame to open New American restaurant Perilla in the West Village, followed by Kin Shop and The Marrow nearby. Despite being very good restaurants (I particularly loved Perilla), they’d all closed by 2015.
Now, at age 46, Dieterle has stepped back into the ring with this new, coastal Italian restaurant. The space — slightly subterranean, a front bar room with tables down one side, and a windowless back dining room awash in blue — isn’t ideal, though the four tables up on the sidewalk should be among the most coveted anywhere in the city this summer. Dieterle’s chops remain very much intact, however, and the service vibe, especially for a restaurant this young, is seamless.
Seated near the window onto the street in the front room, we started (as one should) with olive bread, served with olive oil and preserved chilis for slathering. Then, commence the seafood: grilled royal red shrimp, served simply, correctly, and a fried soft shell crab special — a pleasure of the season — on this night set atop a spicy green garlic sauce and hearts of palm. Wonderful. For the main course, grilled dry-aged branzino, served atop blistered green beans and tonnato sauce — a total knockout, courtesy of a fish dry-aging fridge sitting in the hallway linking the front and back rooms. (Do check it out: It’s glass-doored for easy browsing.)
In between those courses, for our primi and a moment of meat: spicy duck meatballs (a longtime Dieterle signature) with (a sparse few) cavatelli, as well as a hyper-seasonal sheep’s milk ricotta agnolotti with mushrooms and asparagus. The pastas, like all the food we ate here, hit perfectly.
Il Totano is a restaurant that feels like it’s been here five years, not five minutes. And it’s one which, despite those dark interiors, emerges as our next prime contender for Restaurant of the Summer. Maybe it’s as simple as New York loving nothing more, sometimes, than a delicious comeback story. –Lockhart Steele
→ Il Totano (Greenwich Village) • 154 W 13th St • Sun-Thurs 5-10p, Fri-Sat 5-11p • Reserve.
RESTAURANTS • Fine Dining Report
Our fine dining correspondent Lee Pitofsky dines at Per Se as often as most civilians order delivery. Here, now, his New York City report for FOUND:
SUMMER SAGA: Last week, Chef James Kent launched a summer-only Terrace Experience at Saga (above) — the first time the spot is serving more than just cocktails outside. The new dining experience, 63 floors up, features a four-course menu ($150 per) that highlights the flavors of summer with both individually plated courses and others designed for sharing. As always at Saga, the dry-aged duck breast and sausage with green asparagus, artichoke, duck jus and msemen bread is spectacular. Reserve.
SHOWTIME IN GREENPOINT: Just twelve months in, Restaurant Yuu in Greenpoint is making the kinds of strides that typically take years. It’s become one of the city’s most exciting places to dine, thanks to chef Yuu Shimano’s flawless, multi-course tasting menu of premium Japanese ingredients and flawless French techniques. Dining at Yuu is a borderline Broadway spectacle, from the moment the curtains open and the entire team welcomes guests in unison. The service is impeccable, with chefs adding finishing touches on many of the dishes right in front of you. This visit’s highlight was an impossibly succulent, tender lamb chop baked in a salt crust with asari clam, mint, kombu, and lemongrass, finished with a memorable mirin hollandaise sauce. Reserve.
BEEF, CHEEK: Beefbar, which originated in Monte Carlo before expanding worldwide, recently opened its first U.S. location in the old Nobu/Nobu Next Door space in Tribeca. A steakhouse at first glance, the playful menu has a little bit of everything — starting with “street food” snacks and appetizers, like the Croque Sando with dry aged beef ribeye ham and mozzarella cheese, finished tableside with “La Sauce Beefbar.” Find steaks among the mains, but also composed dishes, including pasta (try the Wagyu bolognese for two), a burger with beef fat fries, and a sleeper “beefy cordon bleu” with veal filet, beef ribeye ham, melted cheese, panko crust, and black truffle cream that one ought to save some Japanese milk bread for. Reserve. –Lee Pitofsky
NYC RESTAURANT LINKS: Veronika in Flatiron’s Fotografiska Building closing for good June 15 • PJ Clarke’s signs lease at Manhattan West in Hudson Yards • Carroll Gardens favorite Clover Club expanding next door • Coney Island’s ageless pizzeria Totonno’s going up for sale • The case for the teeny-tiny tini.
WORK • Commutes
A new authority
During my commuting days, I spent weekday mornings and evenings on NJ Transit trains, usually on a route that required a transfer in Newark. That meant four daily visits to a Penn Station. If I was forced to rank them (from unpleasant to deeply unpleasant), it would look like this:
4. Newark Penn (am)
3. NY Penn (am)
2. NY Penn (pm)
1. Newark Penn (pm)
Every few months, on the way home, shuffling through a crowd moving from the inbound platform in Newark into the narrow waiting area, down the stairs, past the chests of single beers on ice, through the haze of buttered popcorn, and back up to track 5, I’d swear off the train and vow to take the bus the next morning.
The bus was kind of weird, and subject to traffic delays, but also, direct. Unfortunately, it was direct to the Port Authority. The evening rush was especially bleak, with long waits in a snaking line inside a closet of a vestibule, with windows onto the interior loading zone where the buses came and went in huffing plumes. The first time I got off the escalator into the passenger holding area for the 113x, I went back down because I was sure I’d made a mistake.
So, the new batch of renderings for the proposed (Foster + Partners-designed) renovation of the Port Authority complex hit this week like a cool breeze. They don’t show the waiting areas, but surely, there’s a junior architect raising the ceilings as I type this. Notably, the new Port Authority will make room for today’s buses, which are too big for the 74-year-old building (explains a lot!).
The revamp includes park space outside, better bus storage inside, a central atrium, retail, and skyscrapers on top. Some segments are expected to roll out later this decade, with a projected finish date of 2032. We’ll be waiting from the comfort of our home offices. –Josh Albertson
WORK LINKS: See also: Why are offices struggling to get workers back? It's the commute! • 27-story One Madison Ave wraps construction on Madison Square Park • New fancy offices sit vacant in Brooklyn, ‘not a headquarters location’ • Law firms love offices; leasing surpasses pre-pandemic levels • Trending in Zoom prep: professional makeup artists • Older women rule.
WORK • Tuesday Routine
Big day
KATHERINE LEWIN • Founder & CEO • Big Night
Neighborhoods you work in: West Village, Greenpoint, Brooklyn Heights
It’s Tuesday morning. What’s the scene at your workplace?
Today is a particularly special Tuesday because my book, Big Night, is out today. It’s a modern guide to hosting at home, with 85 dinner-party-ready recipes. It’s a day I’ve been thinking about for two years, and it’s very surreal now that it’s here.
I founded my shop — also called Big Night — in Greenpoint in 2021, and after three years, I think I’ve finally managed to figure out something that at least vaguely resembles a routine. That routine always starts with exactly one cup of coffee (in my favorite Hotel Ceramics mug) and working from home. I use the first few hours in the morning when my business brain works best to get through emails and calls (once I go to the shops, all desire to sit at a laptop goes out the window as I want to constantly rearrange things, chat with my staff, etc.). And as of late, all of this morning time has been spent planning and plotting the launch of the book.
What’s on the agenda for today?
I’m prepping for a TV appearance — we’re delivering a whole dinner party tablescape over to the set and blocking out exactly how it will appear on air when we tape the segment tomorrow. Trying not to be nervous.
But! On a more typical Tuesday you can find me in the West Village. Now with two Big Night locations (in Greenpoint and the West Village, which often feel like they’re on different coasts), I have to plot out my week geographically. Tuesday is my West Village day. If I’m doing an in-person lunch or coffee meeting, I like to go to Buvette or St. Jardim or B’Artusi. Then I head over to Big Night to check in on the shop: How is the visual merchandising looking? What new product have we gotten in the last couple of days and how is it selling? Oh god, is that a/c really still leaking? The store experience at Big Night is so important to me, and I’m always obsessing about how our customers feel when they walk through the doors. Afterwards, I head over to keep working at The Malin West Village, where I also do 1:1s with my team.
Any restaurant plans today, tonight, this weekend?
I’m always scheming my next restaurant meal. I just moved to Brooklyn Heights (after living in Greenpoint for almost nine years), and I’ve been loving discovering new favorites and rediscovering old ones all over South Brooklyn: Frankies 457 is still fantastic. Swoony’s blue-cheeese-stuffed olives are reason enough to go sit at the bar there. Poppy’s makes the most delicious Arnold Palmers. Sushi Lin is quietly serving some of the best casual sushi in town. L’Appartement 4F has not only the flakiest croissants, but also baguettes with the perfect tang. I love both Clark’s Diner (old-school) and Montague Diner (brand-new-school). Long Island Bar is always the right answer for cocktails and cheese curds. And Lillo’s pasta just might be the best-kept secret in the area. I’m also just trying to spend as much of my time on the Promenade (sometimes with a sneaky martini in hand) as possible.
How about a little leisure or culture this week?
I’ve been slowly furnishing our new place. I love the thrill of the hunt and my husband and I have recently been doing a silly little Saturday two-stop ritual. The first stop is the Design Within Reach outlet store in Industry City (when you go, ask for Ed, he’s the best). Their stock is changing constantly and they get some pretty insane pieces in. The second stop is Defonte’s in Red Hook. I’ve never had a better sandwich in my life. My current fixation is the prosciutto special (with the thinnest slices of fried eggplant) but I plan to work my way through the entire menu throughout the rest of this summer. In this moment I’m looking for home design inspiration everywhere I go in the city — and seeing the new Quarters space recently blew me away.
What’s a recent big-ticket purchase you love?
My custom couch. I worked on it with Laura of HiLo Brooklyn. She sources vintage couch frames and then entirely reworks them to fit your vision and space. The process was a real creative joy and now I get to stare at this beautiful striped piece (above) every day.
What NYC store or service do you love to recommend?
Since we’ve been chatting about home things, let’s keep that theme going. For renovation, I cannot recommend Decorum Design & Build more. The owner Erica Padgett mainly focuses on residences, but she also built our two shops. We hired Sandoukas Painting to paint our apartment — they are the sweetest guys and their team did a fantastic job.
Maybe this is obvious, given my job, but I really do think one of the best parts of living in New York City is the access to so many incredible local businesses. Whenever a friend asks “Do you know anywhere/anyone who…” and I have the answer(s), those are the moments that make me feel most like a New Yorker.
→ Big Night Book Launch • Parcelle (Lower East Side) • 135 Division St • Wed June 5, 6p • $85 per • Buy tickets.
GOODS & SERVICES LINKS: Chinese retailer Miniso coming to corner of Broadway and Liberty • A visit to High Valley Books, Greenpoint’s appointment-only trove of rare books and media • MSCHF and the art of scaling taste • The search for the best summer dress is on.
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RESTAURANTS • The Nines
Father’s Day, ticketed
Beefbar (Wall Street), Father’s Day Sunday Roast w/live band, $185 per, reserve