Bar Celona

Walking to my car a few weeks ago, I noticed the smoked glass exterior of Bar Celona; the only signage on the cloaked entrance a golden “BC” logo. Intrigued but totally unsure of what was inside (a whiskey bar?), the locale was put in the memory bank as a place to check out.

The facade intrigues by being both stunning and intimidating. The sharp contrast of the bright logo on the dark entrance along with the inability to see inside leaves the passerby feeling like they are not nearly serious enough to enter.

Yet not entering is the last thing you should do. If you venture inside, you’ll be greeted by the warm, friendly and charmingly nerdy staff. Ease into a fur-lined chair or lounge on the long Chesterfield sofas suspended by chains. High-contrast is the aim, with deep wood veneers, black chandeliers and dark walls balanced by golden chains and other architectural elements thrown into relief by the blazing fireplace. The decor is pure opulence.

We were treated to hand-selected cocktails with lengthy but engrossing descriptions. The intent of Bar Celona is a tapas bar that prepares specialty cocktails from a world and time where bitters and eggs are stirred into drinks. I was unfortunately too late to sample anything from the kitchen but the drinks kept me plenty busy.

I sampled a modern spin on an Old Fashioned. It incorporated grapefruit peel, cherries and a whiskey that is barreled for just 36 hours, leaving it clear as vodka. I ordered this on the suggestion of the bartender who gave me the history of the drink and why it should appeal to me since I am a champion for  Jameson.

It’s this kind of service and pride that makes you forgive the $14 price tag. (The decor helps, too.) We were not asked to leave when the bar was closed at midnight - as it does during the week - only to close the tab. It was hospitality in the truest sense of the word.

I hope this bastion of serious drinkers lasts. It is a cozy place with a caring personality. Ignore your insecurities and step inside this special place.

Bar Celona
104 S. 4th St.
(between Wythe Ave. & Berry St.)
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(718) 237-7828

P.S. Hey BC, a website with a gallery would be nice considering the decor and all…

Candied Acorn Squash

This is a really simple dish that comes out looking like you spent a long time on it.

Ingredients:

• 2 Acorn Squash
• 1/4 Stick of Butter
• Salt & Pepper
• Brown Sugar
• Cinnamon
• Maple Syrup

Start by cutting your squash in half. The nib on top can be extremely difficult to cut through. I don’t really have a good technique for working around it, but be aware of it. You probably want to orient the squash so the nib is the last thing you cut through because your knife will get stuck.

Once you halve it, take a spoon and scoop out the seeds and the stringy bits. Then take a knife and score the squash. Make a big pound sign (#) in the middle going from edge to edge. This helps the squash cook and lets the butter and maple syrup seep in.

Now that you have four, scored halves. Lightly season with salt and pepper. This dish is very sweet, the salt and pepper helps to balance the dish.

After the salt and pepper, sprinkle brown sugar and cinnamon all over the fleshy part of the squash. Don’t go nuts, you are adding maple syrup next. Just make sure there is an evenly distributed layer of brown sugar and cinnamon. About a tablespoon of each per half.

Next, cut a 1/4-inch thick slab of butter and place in the middle of the squash. Take your maple syrup and make a ring around the butter. One ring is all you need unless you want to serve as a dessert, which is completely doable if you’d like.

Now that you have all your ingredients together on your squash, pop it in the microwave. Yes, the microwave. You could do it in the oven but it takes over an hour and you have a good chance of burning it. The microwave takes 30 minutes tops. Set it for 15 minutes, check it, then another 15 minutes.

The squash will come out hotter then your menopausal aunt and the liquid will be scalding like her drunken verbal abuse, so be careful. Serve as is. There is no point in serving people less than a half because the juice will spill out and that’s the crux of the deliciosity.

Enjoy! Happy Thanksgiving!

Mad for “Mad For Chicken”

At my day job, we like to go out for lunch a lot. But the Chinese food in my area is barely edible. One day it dawned on my co-workers and I that we work right near Flushing, or China West as it could be referred to.

Getting all the way into China town in an hour, despite our proximity, is a daunting task. Instead we’ve taken to stopping short of China town and getting food in Korea town. The food here is excellent. Traditional noodles and Korean BBQ is a fantastic combination.

Mad for Chicken considers itself a BBQ restaurant but its a little more than that. They serve a few standard items and few odd items as well. One of the odder items is the Ramen Noodle with Cheese. This has become a staple of our ordering regime, along with the Small Tonkas. They are perfectly fried, panko crusted pork cutlets.

The first time we went there we ordered the afore mentioned items as well as the chicken and an octopus dish. The chicken was perfectly crisp but still juicy inside, unlike many a fried chicken served to me in my life. The skin is probably inflated first like duck giving the diner a crisp, crunchy sensation with every bite. The octopus on the other hand, was terrible.

Chewy and lacking any flavor this was a disappointing dish. It also cost around $20. On our second visit we tried to learn from our mistakes and only ordered the dishes that were around $10 or less. This, my friends, is the magic formula at Mad for Chicken. The less expensive dishes are thoughtful and delicious. Its like the chef feels compelled to make entree style dishes, but leaves his heart out of the equation.

We ordered the french fry and shrimp combo (around $13) and received perfectly fried shrimp and fries seasoned with Parmesan. You have to commend this place for its use of exotic ingredients. Or its bravery in combining ingredients most places would never put on the same plate.

This place is a perfect lunch spot. Who can complain about a place where the cheaper the food is the better it tastes? They are also delightfully friendly, offering complimentary frozen yogurt after every meal. A welcome site to calm the burning from the Ramen Noodle.

Mad For Chicken

157-18 Northern Blvd.
Flushing, NY 11354
Tel: 718-321-3818

Dim Sum in Queens

Jade Asian Restaurant & Caterers

Let me start by clearing the air on the topic of dim sum. If you, like I did, think dim sum is a type of dumpling, you’re wrong. If you think you’re going to at least find what commonly passes for a dumpling at dim sum, you‘re still wrong. Because if you should go looking for dim sum and find the real thing, you’ll be in for a shock.

Entering Jade is like entering the set of a game show. Master of ceremonies at the top of a marble stairway, mic hand, surrounded by adoring fans. Except it’s not a suave 67-year-old-man with salt-and-pepper hair and an unnatural tan. It’s an angry woman screaming out what I presume are numbers, or perhaps names, at her fans, the throngs of hungry Asian folk lining the stairways before the stage that is dim sum.

Dim sum is the act of getting together and eating an enormous breakfast in an equally enormous hall at a rather large table. This table will be comprised of your party and however many other parties it takes to fill up your round table. In my case, I was running late and my party had already been seated.

I got lucky and circumvented what was later described to me as a thank-the-good-lord-we-had-a-native-speaker-with-us kind of experience while waiting for the game show host to call you. Alone, I traversed the sea of tables and found my friends already eating. I was quickly poured a cup of chrysanthemum tea by my new company and they started telling me what was good or bad.

Now, I don’t really know how to rate a piece of tripe. Essentially as long as I found it edible, I figured this was some damn good tripe. And, well, it was edible. But there is a very particular flavor profile involved, something I’ve only tasted in China. Ever hear of star anise? It’s a very un-American flavor that is in everything there. That’s what told me this place was for real.



Sitting down, carts were zipping around me motivated by wrinkly women. The carts were all filled with food sitting in the same bamboo steamers that you usually see moo shoo in. Except these were filled with things that you’ve never seen in a Chinese restaurant before. There’s nothing Americanized here; this stuff is authentic.

So authentic that, as I sat there, a cart passed by with duck tongues. I recognized these from my trip. When I stopped the woman, she was so happy that a little gwai lo knew they were duck tongues. She was even more pleased when I ordered them. Duck tongues are like a chicken wing with only one bone and no joints. It’s just a little piece of tender, yet somewhat gummy, meat. And it happens to be delicious. I had tried these before, so it wasn’t totally new territory but I’d had them only once and never expected to see them again. But then came something I’ve never had before.

Duck feet. This was new. The last foot I ate, I didn’t enjoy. It was a pig foot. When I thought I had finished all that was edible about the foot I put it down, not full but satisfied that I really gave it a go. Then I looked at the plate of the friend who’d introduced me to pig feet in the first place. She had but a few bones left. I basically had what was served to me. But the duck foot was different. It was rather good. Again, not unlike a chicken wing. It had small bits of meat around bones and joints that fell apart. It was all tender, tasty and only the juiciest bits of meat. But it definitely was a foot; there was no disguising it, you bit through the webbing. This is not for everyone, but if you like, or don’t mind, the jelly kinds of meats, the cartilages and such, then duck feet are for you.

Now that I have sufficiently scared you from ever eating dim sum, let me give you some advice. There are way more average things than what I described. There are the commonly eaten parts of the pig and the chicken. There is a plain rice and good tea. But the truth is, don’t expect good service if you don’t go with someone that speaks the language. Even with someone who did, they tried to give my friend lo mein. But, hey, that’s ok. I could picture working in a kosher deli and keeping the tongue and chopped liver for myself and those in the know.

If you get the chance to go with someone who speaks Chinese, take it. It’s important. It’s fun. It’s like stepping into China for a morning. The only real negative is that it’s in Queens. Nothing’s perfect.

Special thanks to Hana and Rei

Jade Asian Restaurant & Caterers
136-28 39th Ave
Flushing, NY 11354
(718) 762-8821 

A Review of Chef Colicchio’s Craft Bar

So my sister just turned 30. (Happy Birthday big sis!) And, god bless her, she decided we should go out somewhere special for dinner. We went to zagats.com and started looking. Anisa was a fan favorite, but unfortunately suffered from a fire and wouldn’t be open in time. Obviously Peter Lugers came up, but that almost seems pedestrian now that we know about the $10 burgers. BTW, if you don’t know, Lugers has a $10 burger that may be one of the best cheeseburgers there are.

Anyway, we picked Craft Bar, the Tom Colicchio joint. Needless to say I’m syked. I’ve been lucky enough to have gone to Felidia and Babo, so I know to expect a lot out of these chefs. Yes, this is Craft Bar not Craft so its a little less expensive and I’m assuming a little less stuffy. All good things in my book.

A bold move. The front of Craft Bar is all glass. Its extremely inviting, especially on a need-your-scarf October night. I wondered what it would look like if there weren’t a lot of people in it. If the big glass facade would result in a cavernous look. But that night— there was no need to worry. The bar was full, there were happy people conversing and filled tables that gave it a buzzing, but not hurried din once you entered.

The lobby has a catwalk with access to myriad wines in rows of fridges. The look is modern, the catwalk is black steel. The stools of the bar contrast with the metal with their warm wood but are clearly a modern design. The whole restaurant has a look that suggested you would leave stuffed, drunk and happy.

We ordered oysters. Lots of oysters. The entire table agreed that these might be the best oysters anyone had ever had. They came with a balsamic vinaigrette, a first for me, but the acidity worked really well.

I really like octopus and have made enough attempts at ordering the stuff to know that ordering octopus is a great way to tell if there are good chefs behind the counter. So I ordered the octopus. To me, the stuff should be charred but not chewy, the way they were served at Babo and Felidia. Chef Colicchio did not disappoint.

All the apps were exceptional. The Smoked Pig Head Terrine was even surprisingly good. It looked like one of those meats that are held together by a jelly. Except this was smoked pig so it tasted smoky and rich. But the varying taste it had depending on the color of the protein pressed between the jell-o mold you just spread on a nice, unsuspecting triangle of toast was alarming.

As was the soup. It was a Clam Chowder with Pig Belly. How could that have been the dish that went wrong? But it was. It had no depth of flavor. Ol’ Tommy would have torn apart a top chef that made this (sorry had to go there at least once).

The other disappointing item was the Lamb Shank. It had no real flavor. Which was weird because the Celery Root Ravioli was outstanding. As was the Skate and the Pork Belly. So, the more routine items on the menu were the only things that weren’t great. Considering they weren’t any cheaper, I seriously suggest expanding your culinary horizons at this restaurant. Skate wing tastes like scallops. They will serve you a giant piece of fish that tastes exactly like a scallop. And Pork Belly is like taking the goodness that is pork and distilling it into a seared rectangle that you place over a delicious sauce (i have no idea what it was) and lentils that served to soak up the excess goodness that ran down this perfectly seasoned piece of heaven. This place is dope.

The deserts were excellent as well. Due to a snafu on an order, the waitress threw in a grape sorbet with whip cream and peanut butter cookies desert. The waitress and the rest of the staff was very nice, btw.

I would highly recommend going here. The service was excellent. We sat for over three hours and never once felt the slightest bit rushed. The crowd had an occasional family with a kid wearing a hoodie that didnt look out of place despite most of the crowd being a little more upscale. They have a $10 Corn Beef sandwich that’s giving me a reason to come for lunch.

This place gets a big thumbs up.