Market dining is the fashion of the moment. Diverse cuisines, open kitchens, counter and family table seating offer today’s foodies the opportunity to have celebrity chef-designed menus composed of fresh, artisanal ingredients in a casual, stylish environment. And in some Food Hall dining venues, you can follow up your meal by purchasing the ingredients to take home.
The Todd English Food Hall is composed of nine food stations (Ocean Grill & Oyster Bar, Noodle & Dumpling Bar, Pasta Bar, Sushi Bar, The Grill, Taqueria, Pizza, Cheese & Charcuterie, Wine Bar and Patisserie). Settle down at one of those station’s counters or at a family table and order to your heart’s content. Unlike the dining experience at Eataly, where you have to sit in the station whose food you want to eat, here you can order across the different cuisines and the dishes will be brought to you. This is dine around without playing musical tables. The brilliance of this tweak is, of course, that your dining partners can order what they want and still sit with you!
And, as for stylish interiors, this European-inspired space has mosaic marble floors, wood panelling, stained-glass windows, lovely tiled walls and ceramic backdrops which create a sense of different dining rooms within the whole.
Unlike Eataly – which I understand is now the third most visited tourist site in Manhattan – the food hall is calm. Reservations are not hard to get (if you are content with a station counter), service is efficient making for a good lunch spot, the food is delicious and the wines interesting.
Metta, Norberto Piattoni's Fort Green neighborhood restaurant[/caption]
Francis Mallmann, the revered Argentinian chef made famous by his many restaurants around the world, a couple of books on his cooking style and a hit television series, Chef's Table, has ensured his legacy with a diaspora of chef proteges, two of whom have rolled up in New York. Norberto, better known to his friends as Negro, recently opened Metta, a neighborhood restaurant located on a quiet corner two blocks from the Fort Greene farmers market in Brooklyn. It offers sustainably sourced, vegetable-forward dishes all cooked in a custom designed, open-fire kitchen, using South American asado techniques, utilizing all aspects of the fire (smoke, flame, ash and embers) to create layers of flavor in dishes. Packed with happy diners the night I went, it is relaxed, delicious, interesting and fun.
[caption id="attachment_8248" align="alignnone" width="500"]
Flora Bar, Ignacio Mattos' third opening in New York[/caption]
Ignacio Mattos was born in Uruguay and learned to cook in the kitchens of Mallman and Slow Food legend, Alice Waters. His two other restaurants in New York, Estela, with its bold, Mediterranean-inspired cooking, and Altro Paradiso, with its Italian cuisine, are favorites of mine. Now, Ignacio has come with his team to the Met Brauer on 76th and Madison, offering small bites as well as main dishes in a comfortable setting either indoors or on the open terrace. Service is superb, wines delicious and the food captivating. The space, in my opinion, could do with some tlc - easily accomplished. If you can serve food like that, a bit of flower planting and decorating should come easy.
"
["post_title"]=>
string(21) "The Mallmann Diaspora"
["post_excerpt"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_status"]=>
string(7) "publish"
["comment_status"]=>
string(4) "open"
["ping_status"]=>
string(4) "open"
["post_password"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_name"]=>
string(21) "the-mallmann-diaspora"
["to_ping"]=>
string(0) ""
["pinged"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_modified"]=>
string(19) "2017-05-30 11:34:14"
["post_modified_gmt"]=>
string(19) "2017-05-30 15:34:14"
["post_content_filtered"]=>
string(0) ""
["post_parent"]=>
int(0)
["guid"]=>
string(31) "http://lisalindblad.com/?p=8253"
["menu_order"]=>
int(0)
["post_type"]=>
string(4) "post"
["post_mime_type"]=>
string(0) ""
["comment_count"]=>
string(1) "0"
["filter"]=>
string(3) "raw"
}
}