Parsley, Sage, Rosemary's, and Pete Wells

photo by dan kriegerPete Wells files on Rosemary's this week, after waiting an hour and a half to get a table.  The restaurant opened in June, and while its big windows play nicely with the warm summer breeze, the host stand is still learning to play with the droves of guests fluttering to the corner of West 10th and Greenwich Ave.

Wells finds flavor and value in chef Wade Moises' food, "Mr. Moises is adept at working vegetables and seafood into antipasti that bring your appetite to attention," and "each vegetable antipasto is $5; the pastas are $14 or less."  It sounds like a page from Batali's book, where a dozen $5 verdure and cheap pastas live on a stones throw away at Otto.  This affordable approach is no coincidence, Moises worked at both Babbo and Eataly.

The gimmicky wine list at Rosemary's is hit or miss.  Offering 40 wines all for $40, it leaves Wells feeling, "some chagrin at paying $40 for the kinds of bottles that might be opened at an office party."  Rosemary's has their own rooftop garden, "the urban agrarian notion does seem to have provided a theme for the decor," which is rustic and plant riddled and gives Rosemary's "the feel of a trllised patio in some corner of Italy that's heavily populated by Upper East Siders."  Wells gives one star to Rosemary's.

It's Not You, It's Me; Sometimes Restaurants Need Breaks Too

Every now and then restaurants take a break so owners and employees can keep their sanity.  Despite landing on Bon Appetit's Best New Restaurants of 2012, Battersby in Brooklyn is on vacation this week.  They shut things down on Sunday and will be back to 255 Smith Street Tuesday the 4th.

Sometimes restaurants close so they can undergo renovations, as we just saw last week with Pok Pok Wing.  Andy Ricker shut things down for the week of August 19th and opened Pok Pok Phat Thai in the former Pok Pok Wing space.

The Frank's got in on the morph movement back in March.  They shut down Frankies 17 on the Lower East Side and turned the once Italian place into a Basque restaurant called Francesca.

Signs up outside the Lower East Side 'inoteca reveal this week's renovating restaurant.  Jason Denton's 98 Rivington Street restaurant closed yesterday and will reopen Saturday with a reworked menu.

Colin Spoelman and Kings County Distillery

Kings County Distillery got a license to make moonshine and bourbon whiskey in 2010.  When that happened, co-founder Colin Spoelman, a native of Harlan, Kentucky, moved the operation from his apartment to East Williamsburg.  His compassion for the booze that has long been a part of his Appalachian heritage fed the public's loyalty to his brand and Kings County Distillery quickly outgrew the 35 Meadow Street space.  In April of this year, the distillery signed a 20-year lease in the Paymaster Building in Brooklyn's historic Navy Yard.

Clay Risen wrote an article for the Times last week about the two domineering sides to whiskey distilling; traditionalists that age their moonshine in 53-gallon oak barrels for upwards of 20 years, and distilleries like Kings County who are achieving similar (often superior) results aging their product for nine to fifteen months in five-gallon barrels.

Digest NY founder Craig Cavallo recently took a tour of the new Kings County Distillery space and had a chance to chat with Colin about the state of small batch spirits in today's market and how the public graciously accepts his product as an alternative to big brand bourbons.

Read the article over at our friend Tom Ran's website The Scout Mag.

Pok Pok Phat Thai is Up and Running

Andy Ricker's Pok Pok Wing reopened as Pok Pok Phat Thai Friday, after closing Sunday the 19th so the kitchen could transition from "Ike's Wings" factory to a phat Thai, aka pad Thai, restaurant.  Ricker is now serving his "Ike's Wings" exclusively at Pok Pok NY on Columbia Street in Cobble Hill. 

Pok Pok Phat Thai is serving five different types of phat Thai, Hoi Thawt (a crispy broken crepe with mussels and eggs), and "A Bangkok Chinatown specialty" known as Kuaytiaw Khua Kai (a wide rice noodle dish with chicken, cuttlefish, and duck egg).  The grub can all be washed down with the famous Pok Pok drinking vinegars or a few other iced tea and coffee options.  Nothing on the menu exceeds $12.

Serious Eats was there to document the reopening Friday, and the Pok Pok Phat Thai website has a few other pictures of some of the dishes.

Donde Dinner?

Donde Dinner? wants to make your next dining experience an adventure.  So, we'll pick a restaurant and post its address for you every Friday.  The catch is, that's all the information you get.  No name, no type of cuisine, and no Googling!  Before we get to this week's DD, let us reveal last week's restaurant.  We'll give you a hint; Pete Wells just reviewed it this week for The Times...

Last week's address:

268 Clinton Street (btwn Verandah Pl and Warren St), Brooklyn = La Vara

This weeks spot 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 don't have to worry about a dress code.  Just hop on the train, or your feet, or your bike, and head to:

101 Saint Marks Place (btwn 1st and A)

Out of the Blue, Into the Pod 39 Hotel

Earlier this year it looked like the next move from April Bloomfield and Ken Friedman was going to be a wine bar on Bleecker Street.  They wrote a letter to neighbors back in March to introduce themselves but ended up with a change of heart and any expansion plans were put on hold, until now.

Bloomfield and Friedman are opening a bar/taqueria on the roof of the new Pod 39 Hotel on 39th Street.  The kitchen isn't up and running yet, but the bar opens to the public tonight.

Expect pig's ears and sweetbread tacos on the menu along with other, more traditional tacos made by a yet to be named taciolo.  Carla Rzeszewski, Wine Director from The Spotted Pig, is making the move to handle all things wine and former Hotel Delmano/Freeman's employee Sam Anderson is taking care of the cocktails. [Eater] [Gothamist]

Wine Director Roberto Paris Will Return to Il Buco After a 3-Year Hiatus

Roberto Paris wasn't in New York in February to see Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria get three glowing stars from Pete Wells, but he'll be here from now on.  Paris worked at Alimentari's older sister restaurant Il Buco as the wine director from 1997 until 2009.  His extensive knowledge of wine helped elevate Il Buco's reputation in a city that's stuffed like cannelloni with Italian restaurants.  His time at Il Buco established a sense of community at the restaurant and introduced New York City to the great, complex, earthy, Rhone-esque Sagrantino grape that grows in Montefalco, Umbria, Paris' native region of Italy.  Paris equates leaving the restaurant after 11 years to a break up.  Daniel Meyer wrote an article for Serious Eats and quotes Paris on the subject, "It's like when you're in a long relationship.  When you break up you are disombobulated, but it's also a time to discover different aspects of yourself."

Meyer informs us of Roberto Paris' return to the city of New York next month after a three year hiatus.  His plan?  Go back to work with Alberto Avalle and Donna Lennard at Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria, where he will bring back what Lennard explains is that visceral elemant and a certain je ne sais quoi.

La Vara and Cobble Hill Get Two More Stars from Wells

Cobble Hill and Pete Wells are becoming great friends. Andy Ricker opened Pok Pok NY on Columbia Street in the western reaches of the neighborhood earlier this year and Wells gave it two stars in June.  This week, Wells goes back to Cobble Hill, to La Vara, and gives it the same two-star treatment.

La Vara opened on Clinton Street back in May.  It's the newest project from Alex Raij and her husband/co-chef Eder Montero.  Here, the married couple are bringing a unique twist to the Spanish cuisine that can be found at their other restaurants in Chelsea: Txikito and El Quinto Pino.  At La Vara, there's a focus on "the vast legacy of the Jews and Muslims who shared the Iberian Peninsula with Christians for centuries.  This three-way marriage, known as la convivencia, did wonderful things for the country’s kitchens."

"La Vara serves most things as small tapas-size dishes.  Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t."  In a Diner's Journal article published today, Wells asks the reader, "Do you like small plates restaurants? Do you like lots of little tastes, or do you want more?"  The result is an ongoing dialogue on Twitter (read the highlights here) that includes the likes of Bloomberg restaurant critic Ryan Sutton and David Chang.

Wells clearly enjoyed a few dishes at La Vara, namely the griddled red shrimp and a pasta called gurullos, which he found to be "as fluffy as an Italian grandmother’s prizewinning gnocchi."  The review is as much a dissecction of La Vara's efforts as it is a thorough lesson on the history of religion in Spain.  "La Vara, by the way, was the name of a Jewish newspaper published in New York until it ceased in 1948."