Donde Dinner?

With Donde Dinner?, DigestNY will pick a restaurant and post its address for you every Friday.  The catch is, that's all the information we're giving you.  No name, no type of cuisine, and no Googling allowed!  Price, quality, and accessibility are all being taken into concern.  We promise not to have you waiting at the bar for two hours with $15 cocktails, and since we're not fancy folk, you never have to worry about a dress code.  Just hop on the train, or your feet, or your bike, and head to:

207 West 14th Street (btwn 7th and 8th)

The Third Time's Another Charm

Tamer Hamawi, Elise Rosenberg, and Emelie Kihlstrom have added Governor to their Brooklyn empire.  Governor is the third project from the team that opened Colonie and Gran Electrica all within a year and a half.

Colonie opened in February 2011 and received a star from the Times three months later.  Gran Electrica opened in March this year on Front Street in Dumbo.  Governor opened last night and serves food from chef Bradford McDonald.  The restaurant showcases McDonald's past, some of which was spent working at Per Se and the food forage mecca that is Noma.  The menu has items like smoked ham holladaise, marrow popovers, and squash gazpacho.  A tasting menu is in the works and should debut sometime this summer.  In the meantime, take a look around the new space at 15 Main Street.

Pete Wells Admires Hill Country

In celebrating America's independence, Pete Wells files a two star review on Hill Country Barbecue.  "The restaurant is a state-of-the-art Manhattan homage to the preindustrial craft of Texas barbecue."  He's a big fan of the "moist brisket," the "greasy paper," and the beef and pork ribs, which he makes sound remarkably similar to a Butterfinger with their "similarly peppery, crunchy top layer."

Despite the 1,500 pounds of oak shipped from Texas that Hill Country burns through a week, "it doesn't produce that kind of deeply smoky barbecue" that Lockhart, Texas is known for.  It's a fact that doesn't keep Wells from dropping two stars on Hill Country.

Wells points out Peter Meehan's opinion of Hill Country from shortly after it opened in 2007, when Meehan said, "No other barbecue place that has opened in New York in recent years has gotten it so right, right out of the gate."  Wells feels the same way five years later, "Hill Country may not be the real thing. But it plays the part better than anybody else in town."

Have Some Watermelon with Your Watermelon Tomorrow

In 1933, the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution repealed the 18th Amendment that had established prohibition 13 years earlier in January of 1920.  In 2000, Nico Freccia and Shaun O’Sullivan founded the 21st Amendment Brewery in San Francisco’s historic South Park neighborhood.

Their intentions were to make hand crafted beers and great food in an environment that pays homage to a culture forced into the underground in the first quarter of the 20th Century.  Fortunately for us on the East Coast, their beer has good distribution.

21st Amendment makes a seasonal summer beer called Hell or High Watermelon.  It's available from April to September in six-packs and on tap.  It's a classic American wheat beer that incorporates watermelon into the secondary fermentation.  The result is a super light, crisp, refreshing brew that will go nicely with your BBQ tomorrow.

Rock on Down to Rippers

The Meat Hook and Roberta's team encourage you to head on down to Rock Rock Rock, Rockaway Beach to hit up their surfshack.  Ripper's is on the boardwalk and 86th Street, across the sand from the surf spot at Rockaway Beach.  It's open from 7am - 7pm and has iced coffee and breakfast burritos to fuel the surfers and other early birds making it to the beach before high noon.  If sun and fun aren't enough to get beach bound on the A train, the video should help.

There will be more buns in the sun tomorrow at Roberta's hot dog eating contest.  They're celebrating the 4th with a sold out hot dog bash tomorrow from 11am - 7pm.  "The elastic belly," AKA Kobayashi, will be there to take on hot dog eating pros from around the country.

Jason Wang is Working on Making his Food More Famous

Xi'an is a western Chinese city that continues to inspire Jason Wang, 24, and his father David Shi. They are trendsetters of region-specific Asian food responsible for bringing Xi'an cuisine to New York with their chain of Xi'an Famous Foods. It is a quickly growing empire with storefronts at 67 Bayard Street (the only location with a bathroom), 81 St. Marks Place, and 41-28 Main Street bsmt #26 in Flushing, Queens.

Biang! is the latest project from the Xi'an team and it recently opened in Flushing, up the street from the original Xi'an. The restaurant serves the same Xi'an inspired food as the other locations, but does so in a chic venue with waiter-service.

In an interview with papermag, Jason talks about possible expansions, the commissary in Brooklyn that makes food for all the Xi'an locations, and his forseeable future, "It'll be harder to work when I'm older so I might as well suck it up now and take a break later."

Donde Dinner?

With Donde Dinner?, DigestNY will pick a restaurant and post its address for you every Friday.  The catch is, that's all the information we're giving you.  No name, no type of cuisine, and no Googling allowed!  Price, quality, and accessibility are all being taken into concern, restrictions that result from trendy diets are not.  We promise not to have you waiting at the bar for two hours with $15 cocktails, and since we're not fancy folk, you never have to worry about a dress code.  Just hop on the train, or your feet, or your bike, and head to:

766 Classon Avenue (2, 3, 4, 5 train to Franklin Ave in Brooklyn!) 

South Slope Welcomes Greenwood Park

Greenwood Park, Ted Mann's long-awaited, highly-anticipated beer garden, opened to the public last night. The new South Slope digs take up 13,000 square feet on the corner of 7th Ave and 18th in South Slope. DigestNY was there for happy hour today.

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