Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

Author Website

By

Malepartus (Frankfurt): A Fressnarkose (Food Coma) Feast

I’m a big believer in eating in red-light districts.

In Asia at least, that’s where you can often find good food that’s fairly cheap in settings that are open deep into the night.

It turns out that this sometimes holds true even for gentrified neighborhoods that once were red-light districts — at least that’s what I discovered during a recent jaunt to Frankfurt’s Bornheim, a city district once called “Das lustige Dorf” (“The Merry Village”) because of the evening hotbed that it was more than 100 years ago …

[Read more…]

By

Zum Bembelsche (Raunheim, Germany): Apple Wine & Schnitzel, Classic Frankfurt

Of course I landed in Frankfurt hungry. Starving, really.

Not to mention exhausted, grumpy — and did I mention famished? Which is, as you might guess, not the best combination.

With the goal being to feed me — and fast — we decided to step into a place that popped up on a road nearby. Now, as someone who tends to like researching places before I pick up a fork there, I wondered, would this random choice near the woods of Raunheim, Germany, be OK?

The sound of its name — Bembelsche, which means jug of apple wine, the local specialty — was promising though. And schnitzel was on the menu.

So hey, we thought, this can’t be bad …

[Read more…]

By

Jones Wood Foundry: Easy Peasy Comfort Food

It has been said that I am something of an Anglophile.

Which is probably unsurprising given that I grew up in Singapore, a former British colony that still prizes its high teas and bangers and mash despite having developed its own formidable — and unique — cuisine in the centuries since the Brits first landed.

So when I was dragged to the new Jones Wood Foundry on the Upper East Side recently — a little reluctantly, I have to admit, given its distance from where I live — things started looked better the moment menus appeared. Haddock and chips, hearty pork pie, steak and kidney pie and, of course, bangers and mash — this gastropub had it all.

A round of drinks was immediately ordered. Dinner was suddenly in the cards …

[Read more…]

By

Buvette: Chicken, Au Courant

It is never easy to lose something you love.

For me, this moment in New York restaurants occurred in late 2009, when the storied Pink Teacup, a soul food spot that had drawn celebrities ranging from Whoopi Goldberg to Mick Jagger (and had the autographed photos plastered on its walls to prove it) suddenly shuttered after 55 years. For years, this sleepy rose-hued cubby hole along slender Grove Street in the West Village was my go-to place on many a weeknight and lazy Sunday afternoon. Strawberry pancakes, smothered pork chops and — in my opinion — the best fried chicken in New York, the Pink Teacup had it all. Astronomical property taxes and rising food costs ultimately sealed its fate, however. (The restaurant has since reopened in a different spot but the scene — massive, clubby and loud — is different and sadly, so is the fried chicken.)

Just over a year later, a new restaurant has shoehorned its way into the old Pink Teacup’s sliver of a space, however, and it could not be more different. Billed as a “gastroteque,” Buvette, by chef Jody Williams (formerly of Morandi and Gottino), is a lot of things its predecessor was not. Packed with a crowd that looks as if it would be completely at home on the set of “Gossip Girl,” the place is French, constantly burbling with loud chatter, downtown chic and anything but homey and comforting.

When chef Simpson suggested we check it out, I was instantly dismissive. Surely, I couldn’t possibly like my old sweetheart’s replacement. Why waste my time?

Curiosity is a powerful thing, however. And soon enough, I found myself reluctantly sliding into a seat at Buvette’s jammed bar …

[Read more…]

By

The Breslin: Gastropub, Grown Up


CIMG0760

This is the sort of restaurant that The Breslin is: You will arrive on a Monday night to find the restaurant full and the bar jammed with the studiedly — and also studly — casual set. The wait, they will say, is 45 minutes to an hour.

You have a drink, some snacks and 45 minutes go by. An hour passes. There is still no word — even though a stroll through the dining room shows that there are not one, not two, but a few tables that have been sitting empty for a bit.

At almost 90 minutes, it’s getting a little tiresome. Nearby Koreatown is starting to look like a surer bet for dinner — but just as you start to gesture toward your bar waitress for the check, you spy her spotting you and then sprinting over to the hostess for a quick discussion. Faster than you can say “Check, please,” the hostess is by your side, telling you that now, there is a table open.

You consider leaving because, well, this is all a little bizarre. But you decide to stay — and it’s a good thing you do because what’s on the dinner menu, it turns out, is worth waiting for.

But you really wouldn’t expect anything less or different from owners of the Spotted Pig, the small West Village gastropub that quickly became the place for Leonardo DiCaprio spottings when it first opened in 2004. 

[Read more…]