Eat the Week; Dec 31st - Jan 4th

Our list of every Donde Dinner from 2012 | We look back on 2012 and ahead to 2013 | Pete Wells gives two stars to Thirty Acres in Jersey City | Donde Dinner? - 456 Hudson Street

Donde Dinner? - 456 Hudson Street

Donde Dinner? wants to make your next dining experience an adventure. So, every Friday, we pick a restaurant and post its address for you. The catch is, that's all the information you get. No name, no type of cuisine, and no Googling. Before we get on to this week's address, here's last week's:

145 East 39th Street = Salvation Taco

This week's restaurant follows typical Donde Dinner? fashion. Price, quality, and accessibility have all been taken into account. You won't be waiting at the bar for two hours with $15 cocktails and you never have to worry about a dress code. Just hop on the train, or your feet, or your bike, and head to:

456 Hudson Street (btwn Morton and Barrow)

Thirty Acres, Two Stars

[robert stolarik for the times]For his last review of 2012, Pete Wells landed at a restaurant in Jersey City. Thirty Acres is the vision of chef Kevin Pemoulie and his wife Alex. Pemoulie has five years of chef de cuisine at Momofuku Noodle Bar on his resume and the glowing two-star review is likely to bring a few new customers to the PATH in the ensuing weeks. "A restaurant like Thirty Acres would be a find in any state," Wells writes. "It is the kind of place that can redraw regional boundaries, making the Hudson River no more of a barrier to eaters in search of inventive cooking than the East River has become in the past few years. For those who live near a PATH station, it may be easier to reach than several talked-about restaurants in Brooklyn."

Wells has a few gripes with the reservation policy (only available for groups of 5 or more), but likes just about everything else in the 32-seat restaurant, including "the servers, who are unusually friendly and free of pretense," and "the pastel portraits of Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford on corrugated cardboard."

Thirty Acres is B.Y.O.B. and the menu makes for a wonderful canvas to be painted by a slew of different wine. Smoked quail with walnut bread pudding, cranberry bbq sauce, and kale, gnocchi with mushrooms, sauerkraut, sour cream, mustard, and ricotta salata, and steamed cod with mussels, kielbasa, Old Bay, and celery make excellent partners for those old rieslings and expressive zweigelt some of us might have laying around. [NYTimes]

Thank You 2012

Last year was an exciting year for food. Mission Chinese and Pok Pok both opened East Coast outposts, two new chef's counters opened via Atera and Blanca, Pete Wells a) became the New York Times food critic and b) wrote a historically scathing review of Guy Fieri's Times Square restaurant, Dinosaur BBQ announced 604 Union Street in Brooklyn as its next home, Andrew Carmellini opened The Library with work on his French resto Lafayette getting well underway, Gabe Stulman's Little Wisco Empire grew by two via Perla and Chez Sardine (Montmarte, Stulman's next project, will open this year in Chelsea), April Bloomfield and Ken Friedman opened Salvation Taco, The Nomad happened, so did a culinary swap between Eleven Madison Park and Alinea, Italian cuisine invaded SoHo via Principessa, Angelo SoHo, Galli, and Isola Trattoria e Crudo Bar, Great Googa Mooga attracted over 30,000 people to Prospect Park in May, and the entire industry came together after devestation swept through the city in the winds of Hurricane Sandy.

Also in 2012, Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood got its first wine store via Gowanus Wine Merchants, and Third Avenue in the same Brooklyn neighborhood saw the opening of The Pines (our 2012 favorite) and Runner & Stone on the same stretch between Carroll and President Streets (Littleneck is on the same block), creating a culinary nucleus of sorts. Fletcher's Brooklyn Barbecue gave Third Ave a boost a few blocks south when it opened between 7th and 8th Streets last fall. Generally speaking, 2012 was a big year for the borough of Brooklyn. Josh Ozersky wrote 2,000 words to the contrary last year, but the quality of food and number of dining options in Kings County seemed to increase tenfold. Last year alone the borough welcomed Reynard, Gwynnett Street, Aska came and Frej went, Ganso, Talde, Pork Slope, Dassara, Hunter's, Red Gravy, Governor, Gran Electrica, La Vara, Lulu & Po, The Wallace, Dear Bushwick, and Bristket Town. Speedy Romeo, Krescendo, and Brooklyn Central gave pizza fenatics a handful of new options and there was the whole Grimaldi's/Juliana debacle to boot.

The 2013 train is already set in motion and looking to bring another exciting year. Ivan Orkin will open his first stateside ramen shop, the boys behind Torrisi will open two spots on Thompson Street via The Lobster Club and Carbone, Michael White will open The Butterfly, Ristorante Morini uptown and possibly something in the former Fiamma space (the building was sold by BR Guest's Steven Hanson at the end of last year and White's Altamarea Group is leasing the space from the new owners), and Andy Ricker will be opening a Brooklyn outpost of his Portland-based Whiskey Soda Lounge half a block north from Pok Pok Ny on Columbia Street in the spring. Even for the superstitious, there's luck to be had in 2013 and it may come in the form of a Battersby expansion.

For both Manhattan and Brooklyn (and the other, lesser explored boroughs by Digest NY), the lists go on and on and will get even longer as the days of 2013 start to come and go. As they do, we'll be here to keep you abreast and athigh of the latest and greatest of all things food in the greatest city there is.

Happy 2013 New York!

The 2012 Donde Dinner Roundup

We launched Donde Dinner? on Friday, May 18th with 100 Mott Street, aka Shanghai Cafe. With the Donde Dinner column, we provide you with a restaurant's address, but don't tell you it's name until the following week's post. The idea is to take away the (sometimes) hassel of deciding where to go for dinner and (hopefully) make going out to eat an adventure. We've been running the column every Friday since May and, as the year comes to an end, we thought we'd give you a rundown of every Donde Dinner from 2012.

Happy New Year!!

Click to read more ...

Eat the Week; Dec 26th - 28th

Mission Chinese tops Pete Wells' list of 2012 restaurant triumphs | A look around Runner & Stone, the new bakery/restaurant from Chris Pizzulli and Peter Endriss | Andy Ricker plans to open Whiskey Soda Lounge near Pok Pok Ny in the spring | Donde Dinner? - 145 East 39th Street

Donde Dinner? - 145 East 39th Street

Donde Dinner? wants to make your next dining experience an adventure. So, every Friday, we pick a restaurant and post its address for you. The catch is, that's all the information you get. No name, no type of cuisine, and no Googling. With Christmas following a few days after last week's Donde Dinner? post, we thought we'd steer you towards dim sum in Chinatown. Last week's address:

17 Mott Street = Wo Hop

This week's restaurant follows typical Donde Dinner? fashion. Price, quality, and accessibility have all been taken into account. You won't be waiting at the bar for two hours with $15 cocktails and you never have to worry about a dress code. Just hop on the train, or your feet, or your bike, and head to:

145 East 39th Street (btwn Lexington and Third)

Andy Ricker's Whiskey Soda Lounge is Coming to Brooklyn

Andy Ricker has been operating in New York City for just about a year now. Pok Pok Wing opened in January 2011, but morphed into Pok Pok Phat Thai in August after the demand for Ike's Wings proved too great for the small Rivington Street space. Ricker opened Pok Pok Ny in April, four months after Pok Pok Wing, on Columbia Street in Brooklyn. The restaurant's been packed ever since and the waits are rarely shy of an hour. That might change come spring time, as Diner's Journal confirmed earlier rumors that Ricker was bringing his Portland-based Whiskey Soda Lounge to New York.

The lounge will open this spring in the former Iro Sushi space at 115 Columbia Street, half a block north of Pok Pok Ny at 127 Columbia Street. The extra space provided by the new venue will help with the inevitable waits at Ny. Whiskey Soda Lounge will serve aahaan kap klaem, which is the drinking food of Thailand. Ricker described the food to Diner's Journal as "spicy-salty-sour." Don't worry, Ike's Wings will be on the menu. [DJ]