We’re going to take a break now from our recipe posts to highlight some of the cool restaurants we’ve gotten to go to recently around New York.  The two places we’re featuring today have some things in common:  they’re both in Manhattan, and they both serve up Italian food.  One has a menu of upscale versions of classic Italian-American fare, while the other focuses its food around a single ingredient.  We liked our visits to both, so we’re going to show you some of what we had to eat at each spot – just know that we do feature some meat here.

First is Leonelli Taberna, a new spot located in the Evelyn Hotel at the lower end of Midtown.  The chef who runs it also has a more casual bakery next door, but this place is a full-service restaurant with an interesting and varied menu.  We decided to split a couple of dishes on our visit, starting with the house tomato bread:

Then we had an appetizer of baked ricotta topped with butternut squash, pumpkin seeds, and balsamic vinegar.

And we also shared an order of the eggplant parmesan.

Then Miriam tried the mezzaluna di zucca, which is ravioli stuffed with butternut squash and ricotta in a brown butter sauce with biscotti crumbs on top.

Meanwhile, Cyril had one of the day’s specials:  a slice of prime rib …

… with baby salt potatoes on the side.

A few weeks later we decided to visit another new place:  Nonna Beppa, in SoHo.  This restaurant does a lot of cooking with white and black truffles, and many of their dishes either feature this ingredient or allow you to add some truffles on top.  That’s what Miriam did:  here’s the passatelli al tartufo – pasta cooked in a parmesan, bread crumb, and truffle oil sauce – with some shaved white truffles on top.

Cyril also had some pasta – the tagliatelle panna salsiccia e funghi, made with sausage and mushrooms in a cream sauce.

And we split an arugula and shaved parmesan salad with a grilled artichoke flower on top.

We were glad to have the chance to visit both of these restaurants, because we got to try some interesting food.  At Leonelli Taberna, we had some comfort food as well as interesting takes on classics, like the ravioli topped with biscotti crumbs and the bread with tomatoes baked in.  At Nonna Beppa we got to splurge a little and get some truffles, plus we tried new things like passatelli and a cute little edible artichoke flower.  We know that New York doesn’t lack for Italian food, but we think these two new places are interesting additions to the food landscape here, and we thoroughly enjoyed what we got to eat at each.

Where We Ate: Misi and Mexico 2000

We’re going to take a break from our regular holiday programming to give you some recommendations for where you should eat in the city.  Here are two places in Williamsburg that we got to go to recently and really enjoyed – they’re different cuisines at different price points, but these restaurants are in the same neighborhood and they’re both good in their own unique ways.  So we think you should make a trip over to Brooklyn to check them out.

First is Mexico 2000, located right under the J/M/Z train on a very busy stretch of Broadway right next to its sister store, Mexico 2000 Grocery.  While the grocery, which has gained a bit of a cult following, serves up quick bites, Mexico 2000 is where you can sit and have a leisurely and not too expensive meal.  For example, you can have some guacamole made tableside:

Miriam was able to get one of her favorite foods there – chiles rellenos, stuffed with queso fresco and smothered in tomato sauce …

… plus a side of rice and beans.

Since it was a chilly day, Cyril got the pozole rojo with pork …

… plus two tamales, one vegetarian and one with pork.

A mile away, right down on the waterfront, is Misi, a new pasta restaurant that’s so popular (because it was opened by the same chef behind the hit spot Lilia) that we could only get an 11pm reservation.  We decided to start our meal there with two appetizers:  first was the whole roasted eggplant, drizzled with a Calabrian chile and olive oil sauce.

And we also had what we heard was one of the best new dishes in the city:  the charred peppers, served with whipped ricotta on crostini.

Miriam has Misi’s signature pasta:  the fettuccine with buffalo butter, parmesan cheese, and cracked pepper, which is the restaurant’s version of cacio e pepe.

And Cyril had one of the specials that night, which was a porterhouse steak with a garlic-rosemary rub …

… and a side salad of arugula and parmesan crisps.

So yes, you can see that these are two very distinct places, but they’re both excellent in their own ways.  Misi has some great, creative pastas and appetizers, and it’s worth it (if you can finagle a reservation) to check out all the hype.  Mexico 2000 is much, much more casual, which makes it a great spot for some comfort food, especially considering how hard it is to find good Mexican food in this city.  Williamsburg has a reputation for being an overpriced playground for rich hipsters, but we think these two places show that there’s still interesting food to be had in all corners of the neighborhood.

Where We Ate: Dunhuang and Momofuku

As you’ve probably noticed from all the pasta recipes we post, we love noodles in all forms.  We’re particularly fond of slurping on noodles when we venture out to restaurants around the city – in fact, we’ve previously written about some noodles shops we visited in Manhattan, one of which was recently awarded a Michelin star.  Now we’ve got two new noodle places to recommend in the city, which happen to be just two blocks away from each other.  Here’s what we got!

First is Momofuku Noodle Bar, which is part of the Momofuku empire that also includes four other restaurants, a bunch of food stands, and the dessert-centric Milk Bar in New York, plus outposts in DC, LA, Las Vegas, Toronto, and Sydney.  Although all the Momofuku locations are pretty popular, we visited the Noodle Bar on a Saturday night without a reservation and had to wait less than half an hour, so it’s worth swinging by to see if you can get a seat.

We started our meal there with the bing bread, with a side of chickpea and eggplant spread blended with Momofuku’s signature hozon seasoning.

Cyril also had an order of the smoked wings, rubbed with scallions, garlic, and Thai chiles.

For our noodles, Miriam went with the spicy hozon ramen, which has chickpeas, scallions, and bok choy, plus the noodles.

And Cyril tried the pork ramen, with pork belly and an egg floating alongside his noodles.

Now if you go one block up and one block over from Momofuku Noodle Bar, you’ll reach the East Village location of Dun Huang (which also has spots in Flushing, Clinton Hill, on the Upper West Side, and in Edison, New Jersey).  Dun Hunag’s cuisine comes from Lanzhou, in northwestern China, and features a lot of hand-pulled noodles.  We tried the vegetarian spicy mala noodles, which get their heat from Sichuan peppercorn (you also get to choose what kind of noodles you want in your meal – we went with the wide ones).

Cyril also tried the big plate chicken, which is braised and served with peppers and potatoes.

And we got sides of the spicy potato chips …

… and the eggplant salad, marinated in garlic and soy sauce.

We were really glad we got to try both of these places:  we enjoyed seeing what all the hype around Momofuku is about, and we were introduced to the unique spiciness that comes from the Sichuan mala sauce.  And of course, we got our fill of noodles!  If you’re looking for somewhere to slurp, definitely try one of these restaurants.

Where We Ate: Maybe the Best Bread in New York

In a recent issue of New York magazine, there was a list of splurges from around the city that people though were worth spending extra money for.  The one that really intrigued us was the miche from She Wolf Bakery – because bread is delicious, and surely a loaf that costs $20 was guaranteed to be even more delicious, right?

So we went out and bought it.  Here’s the miche – which is a type of French country bread – in all its glory:

If you can’t tell from this first picture, the miche is enormous:  it weighs 4 pounds and is roughly the size of a steering wheel, because traditional miches were made to feed an entire family for days.  If you’re not ready to commit to the entire thing, you can buy a half-loaf for $10 or a quarter-loaf for $5, but taking home a whole miche is pretty impressive. Here’s a picture with Cyril’s head for scale:

The miche is dark on the outside because is takes so long to bake such a large loaf.  Inside, the bread is light and chewy and has a sourdough taste thanks to being made with a combination of white and wheat flours.  When you cut into it, here’s what it looks like:

We tried this bread two different ways – first, by just slicing it into big pieces and eating it with butter, which was of course pretty tasty.  But we also toasted some slices and spread them with cinnamon honey, which Miriam got from Littlefield Bee Farm on a trip to Block Island, Rhode Island.  We thought the sweet, flavorful honey blended well with the crisp taste of the toasted sourdough.

If you’re interested in eating this miche for yourself, you’re going to have to track it down, since She Wolf Bakery doesn’t have a store front.  They sell their breads at a couple different farmer’s markets in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan on the weekends, but since they only make a limited number of miche loaves each day your best bet is to try to snag one early on a weekday morning so you can be sure they haven’t sold out yet.  We went to Union Square Greenmarket, since it’s pretty centrally located and right on top of several subway lines, and when we arrived at 8:30 on a Wednesday morning they still had quite a few miches left.

So was this $20 well spent?  We think so – She Wolf Bakery’s miche is uniquely delicious in its taste and really impressive in size.  For a long time miche was seen as an unsophisticated type of bread, because it was associated with rural peasants, but its now gotten a reputation as an interesting artisanal treat.  We’re not going to make it a habit of buying expensive bread all the time, but it was fun to try this once.

Where We Ate: New York’s Famous Pizzerias

Last week we showed you some delicious Roman-style pizza we had on a trip around the Upper East Side.  But the pizza madness doesn’t end there!  We’ve spent a long time looking all around New York for some of the best pizza the city has to offer, and we’ve sampled a lot of slices and pies.  Here are our favorites, which come from all over Manhattan and Brooklyn – and once again, these pizzas are 100% vegetarian.

First up, we headed to the Lower East Side to check out the re-opening of Una Pizza Napoletana, which first came to New York in 2004, then decamped for San Francisco for a few years before moving back here just a few weeks ago.  As the name might suggest, they specialize in small Neapolitan pies made with thin, charred crusts.  We shared two pizzas:  the Ilaria, with cherry tomatoes, smoked mozzarella, and arugula …

… and the Concectta, made only on Fridays with a sauce crafted from several different tomatoes, plus Parmesan cheese and cilantro.

Next, we headed over to the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn to get to Lucali, a very, very popular restaurant that sells only pizzas and calzones.  How popular is it?  Well, on a Saturday we showed up at 4:45pm to wait for that evening’s reservation list to open at 5 – and we couldn’t get a table until about 9:30.  If you go, be prepared to do some waiting, but also be prepared for some amazing food!  We got both a thin-crust pizza, topped with mushrooms and basil …

… and one of their enormous calzones, stuffed with cheese and hot peppers and served with red sauce on the side.

If you want to head much deeper into Brooklyn, you can make your way down to Bensonhurst to find L&B Spumoni Gardens, which has been around for almost 80 years.  Their specialty is nice, thick Sicilian slices – these are the plain cheese ones, but you can also get several different toppings.

They also serve up some amazing cold treats, like Italian ices and their namesake spumoni, which is a form of gelato.  Spumoni typically only comes in chocolate, vanilla, and pistachio flavors, so we got a mix of all three in the “rainbow” spumoni, plus a chocolate Italian ice.

Finally, about a mile south of L&B Spumoni Gardens, and almost as far into Brooklyn as you can go before hitting the ocean, is Totonno’s.  This place has been serving up pizzas in Coney Island since 1924, and the grandchildren of the original owner still operate the restaurant.  There was a line snaking out the door when we visited there on a Sunday afternoon, but we didn’t have to wait nearly as long as we did with Lucali’s.  The menu here is pretty simple, too:  the only thing you can order is pizza, with a small handful of toppings available.  We went with red peppers on our pie.

Overall, we think these are some of the best pizzas in New York.  You’ll have to travel all over the city to find them, and you’ll do some amount of waiting, but we think they’re all worth it.  Definitely give some – or all! – of these places a try.