Atera

**Note.  If you are planning on dining at Atera, I highly recommend eating the food before reading this post, as it will ruin a lot of surprises through the course of the meal**

It's amazing how many culinary trends New York City has undertaken in the past decade.  The fall of the twin towers caused the death of fine dining, where as a nation we turned to more economically feasible comfort food options.  We looked for menus that had a recognizable burger and french fries, instead of duck and foie gras.  Fast forward a few years and we became ready to play with our food, and all the emphasis was on molecular gastronomy and the multiple ways we could manipulate nature's ingredients.  Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck in Bray, England, and Ferran Adria's El Bulli in Catalonia, Spain were the world's best known restaurants to showcase it.  When trendsetters like Alinea in Chicago, and WD-50 in New York City ran out of ideas, so did the city's interest with science.  We've seen it already, what can we do next?

Then out of nowhere the "fad" was a practice multiple chefs had been utilizing for years.  Relationships they had built with farmers and emphasis on fresh and local produce started the "farm-to-table" craze.  Like little kids showing off their newest and coolest toys, it became a trend for restaurants to show which local farmers they were using, and how they were showcasing their products.  "Here we have a strawberry soup utilizing strawberries from Berried Treasures Farm."  It was a vehicle that caused all these hard-working low-key farmers at the greenmarket to finally become celebrities in their own right, but chefs decided to push this further.  They wanted to up themselves.  Thus began urban farming and rooftop gardening.

But this is New York City.  We need to push the envelope even further.  We need to watch what chefs from all around the world are doing, and then we need to up that.  Well, New York finally has a theater in which to showcase the newest food craze.  It is called Atera, and the 31 year-old Chef Matthew Lightner has brought from Portland not just a philosophy to utilize local farms, but local parks.  The new trend is called "foraging", and foraged food is now beginning to pop up on menus all around the city.

ilili

I received my first taste of Lebanese cuisine many years ago at a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Brooklyn.  I didn't know what to expect of the cuisine before heading in.  With a friend's help, she navigated me through the menu and after one bite of the fresh baked bread covered in za'atar (a fresh herb blend mixed with sesame seeds, sumac, and lemon), I fell in love.  I will never forget that first taste, and that first meal.

For years that followed I became intrigued by Lebanese, as well as other Mediterranean cuisines. Small plates of mezze (think tapas) of traditional hummus, baba ganoush (baked eggplant mixed with various seasonings), tabbouleh (bulgar and herb salad), to large skewers of meat (mainly lamb and chicken), fresh pita breads, and heavy seasonings of garlic, lemon, fresh herbs, cumin, aleppo pepper (a mild type of chili flake), and sumac (a dried reddish berry powder with a lemony flavor, but not as tart).  There are few that could dislike this cuisine, and if you have yet to try it, I am hoping my descriptions have made you willing to do so.  

At nighttime it can easily be seen as a restaurant

However, it has always served as a medium-profile cuisine.  Small restaurant owners setting up shop serving traditional small plates of hummus, pita sandwiches, and grilled meats over rice.  With the introduction of ilili into the NYC restaurant scene back in 2008, Lebanese cuisine has finally come into the major spotlight.  

Located just a short distance from Madison Square Park, it is very easy to pass by ilili in the daytime.  Like the service staff inside, the restaurant is painted black.  Unless you notice the brown lettering sketched into the black awning over the front doors, the space looks vacant.  Step inside, though, and its a whole other story.  

Ellabess

Lets admit it, hotel restaurants are not that exciting.  Beautiful dining rooms are usually met with apathetic staff and mediocre to sub-par food.  Fine silverware is matched with bright white, stylish dinnerware, that serves as a vessel for food that does not have much thought or care put into it.

Ellabess dining room

Walking into Ellabess you can't help but feel this is going to be one more of those experiences.  Ellabess is housed in the corner of the Nolitan Hotel.  Like many hotel restaurants, the dining room is sleek and chic.  The 70-seat dining room sits just below street level, with two walls of high glass windows allowing an incredible amount of natural light in, and in return allows diners to check out the bustling Nolitan neighborhood outside.  The dining room is set in oak, with Austrian oak floors, and custom-made oak tables and chairs.  A high marble-countered bar sits along the back of the room.

The incredible house-made rolls

At first bite, however, your stereotypes of what hotel restaurants should be are thrown right out the window.  Ellabess is brought to you by Epicurean Management, the same company that created West Village favorites Dell-anima, Anfora, and L'artusi.  With their newest venture, Ellabess, you realize very quickly they're doing some serious food here.

The kitchen is run by Executive Chef Troy Unruh, who was most recently the Chef de Cuisine at Dell-anima, as well as a veteran of Del Posto.  The Executive Sous-Chef is Ty Kotz, the former Chef de Cuisine at Tabla right before the closing of the restaurant back in December.  Also from Tabla is the Executive Pastry Chef Carmine Arroyo, who was the former pastry Sous Chef up until the closing.  The incredible talent in the kitchen translates heavily into the food, making for an overall wonderful and unforgettable experience.

The menu is small, but well put together, offering a little bit of everything from market salads, crab salads, chilled pea soup, to sweetbreads, quail, pork tenderloin, and even fried chicken.  While looking over the menu the first bite of the house-made rolls will make you swoon and transport you to a happier place.  They are warm, buttery, soft, and flavorful.  Reminiscent of your favorite biscuit without the hard texture.

Takashi

"Yakiniku" - a Japanese term referring to grilled meat dishes. 

Takashi is a small, intimate, 34-seat restaurant located in the West Village.  It is named after the Chef and owner, Takashi Inoue, who opened this restaurant with Saheem Ali (the general manager) just over a year ago. 

Being a third-generation Korean immigrant being born in Japan, Takashi masterfully combines the boldness of Korean flavors with the finesse of Japanese cuisine.  His passion comes through with every small bite offered on the menu.  The thought here is to serve beef, beef, and nothing but beef.  He stays sustainable, and uses every cut of the cow possible, from shortrib and ribeye, to more extreme cuts such as tongue, heart, stomach, and even achilles tendon.  Everything is extremely fresh, tastes amazing (he and Saheem spent months sourcing out the best local beef from small, local farms and purveyors), oh, and you get to grill it yourself. 

The address is 456 Hudson Street.  Keep that number in mind as it is what you will be looking for when you dine at Takashi for the first time.  The restaurant does not display its name on its awning, yet the NY Times review hangs proudly off the front window.  Walk through the front door slowly, as you might walk straight into a diner seated at the Chef's counter if you're not paying attention.  Warm wood and slightly dark tones run through the restaurant, and the room of just seven tables and three large benches at the Chef's counter is really no larger than most NYC apartments.  Every table comes equipped with a high-tech electric grill, and the two chefs working behind the counter stay quiet, and work with such precision, speed, and finesse it's hard not to be amazed.  A mural on the wall behind the Chef's counter comically portrays every cut of beef and their definitions, as well as nutritional values.

The Breslin Bar & Dining Room

The Breslin is a British-style gastropub at its finest.  I love restaurants like this.  A place you can go grab great food, in a casual setting, yet still maintains a type of elegant touch. 

The Breslin is located inside the Ace Hotel, with the main entrance adjacent to it.  I emphasize that because my first time going to the restaurant I missed the entrance completely.  I walked into the lobby of the Ace Hotel and thought “this is the strangest looking gastropub I have ever seen”. 

Walking into the Breslin you immediately walk into their bar area.  Lots of dark wood colors, lively atmosphere, and large windows which allow for a lot of natural light to come through.  They offer a wide selection of beers, and it’s a great place for friends to come in and hang out.

This then carries over to the restaurant.  Comfortable booths, wood chairs, tan paper-cloths covering black wood-finished tables, and a lot of random food and animal memorabilia which covers every piece of empty space in the restaurant.  Still-life paintings of fruit, red paper lobsters, a small bull’s head with a giant ring coming out of its nose, and so forth.  Even though the décor is all over the place, it just screams at you “I want you to be comfortable”, and that I was.