Robert Sietsema's Top 10
Annisa
Northeast Taste Chinese Food
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1. This doesn't mean I'm forsaking my first love, Katz's pastrami, but the smoked-meat sandwich at Mile End is denser, redder, and offered in a sandwich that's just the right size for one person to eat, which means I don't have to go around looking for someone to share it with me. Spread mustard on it and add a sour pickle, and I'm in culinary nirvana. The cute and cozy premises of this Boerum Hill newcomer is another plus. 97A Hoyt Street, Brooklyn, 718-852-7510
2. A haystack of glistening vegetables sat before me: bright green garlic chives, pungent Chinese celery, carrots, woodsy mushrooms, onions, matchsticks of fried purple taro, and onions, all of it surmounted by the snap, crackle, and pop of crispy lo mein noodles. There wasn't a smidgen of meat, poultry, or fish anywhere to be found in the Farmer Special at Yee Kee H.K. Style. This unreconstructed empire of crunch at once telegraphs not only the poverty of a Chinese farmer's life, but also its vegetable bounty—in a way I've seen nowhere else but the city's fifth Chinatown. Did I mention it's supremely delicious? 1232 Avenue U, Brooklyn, 718-336-2338
3. The restaurant rose like a phoenix after a devastating fire, and the food became better than ever, as if the near-death experience stimulated it to greater efforts. The pan-roasted farm chicken at Annisa from chef Anita Lo's original menu remains the best thing: a bird—surprisingly plump compared with the desiccated specimens found elsewhere—that has undergone a subdermal stuffing of pig foot, causing the skin to shine like the face of a nervous debutante at her first ball. The bird is scented with white truffles, too, making it hopelessly rich and satisfying. 13 Barrow Street, 212-741-6699
4. One of my favorite things to eat in the world is upma, a South Indian porridge that begins with plain cream of wheat, but then gets mutated like hell by the addition of such things as black mustard seeds, curry leaves, onions, ginger, and pistachios. Imagine my excitement at discovering that upma is incorporated into a dosa at Jersey City's all-vegetarian, mainly vegan Sapthagiri, with a wrapper made of crushed and fermented moong daal. Woo-hoo! The covering adds a grassy taste to the pesarattu upma, and the whole thing challenges your ideas of what to expect from Indian food. 804 Newark Avenue, Jersey City, New Jersey, 201-533-840
5. It was a brilliant move on the part of chef Daniel Holzman to take an Italian-American classic, the meatball hero, and make slight improvements to it, instead of transforming the fuck out of it so that it was no longer recognizable. He began by selecting really, really good bread, which yields soon after you chomp down, instead of resisting your teeth and squirting the balls out the end. He also used fresh mozzarella instead of the crap you find in most pizza parlors. The meatball hero at the Meatball Shop is memorably delicious, and enough like the original that it would pass as such with most meatball-hero aficionados—including myself. 84 Stanton Street, New York, 212-982-8895
6. It sails in to oohs and aahs around the table, a wiggly yellow dome composed of egg and cornmeal, dotted with shrimp in a refreshingly light gravy. Really, if someone just set the sautéed egg with egg at Northeast Taste Chinese Food before you at a picnic table in the park, you'd have no idea what country it came from. Take one jiggly bite and you won't be able to stop yourself—it's a comfort food par excellence. Northeast Taste, by the way, is my favorite of the Yellow Sea restaurants that have lately invaded Flushing's southern end. 43-18 Main Street, Queens, 718-539-3061
7. Every once in a while, you need to eat something so hot that it blows the top of your head off. So it was with the shrimp pepper soup at Maima's, the city's only Liberian restaurant. Sure, the other things are great there—mainly the combinations of such well-kneaded starches as white yam and cassava, paired with rich fish, chicken, and lamb soups. These are relatively spicy, but the pepper soup outdoes them all, brick-red with chilies and bobbing with a clutch of gigundo shrimp—which should be eaten head and all. The crunch distracts you from the spiciness, which then comes charging back at you like a mad bull. 106-47 Guy R. Brewer Boulevard, Queens, 718-206-3538
8. We've been bombarded by burgers the past couple of years: big, two-fisted ones, tiny sliders, and ones with odd toppings. April Bloomfield's lamb burger at the Breslin Bar & Dining Room is different in an utterly refreshing sort of way: The meat is pink and juicy, with a faint barnyard scent that you'd never mistake for beef, and the chef has sense enough to do nothing but put it on a puffy bun and provide cumin mayo alongside, in case you want to send it spinning in a Middle Eastern or a Mexican direction. But the burger is so sweet and juicy that it needs no dressing. 20 W. 29th Street, 212-679-1939
