when you want, where you want.
Where to Eat in January
Illustration: Naomi Otsu
Welcome to Grub Street’s rundown of restaurant recommendations that aims to answer the endlessly recurring question: Where should we go? These are the spots that our food team thinks everyone should visit, for any reason (a new chef, the arrival of an exciting dish, or maybe an opening that’s flown too far under the radar). This month: a revived seafood legend, multiple flavors of “bistro,” sushi from a Yasuda master, and more.
Ulfatlar (Kensington)
This compact, inconspicuous Uzbek restaurant has the look of a discount-furniture store: All off-whites and bright light. But it has grand ambitions, announced up front with a photo of one of the cooks, gesturing with swagger to the big plate of rice he’s holding, superimposed over Samarkand’s Bibi-Khanym Mosque. This plov lives up to the pomp, tasting like it was soaked in lamb (which it basically is), the intense savoriness of the meat — leaner the first time I had it, fattier the second — broken by the chickpeas and raisins. There’s an open kitchen, separated from the dining room by a small deli case of meats, with a giant kazan (the traditional vessel for cooking plov) and a busy charcoal grill. Meats arrive on small decorative plates — cubes of veal liver, lamb chops, and lula kebabs that have the right ratio of meat to fat. There are refreshing salads, like achik chuchuk (sliced tomato, pepper, and onion), and soups, including laghman, with its tomatoey broth, and mastava, the softened rice grains in a packed bowl of lamb broth. Not everything on the menu has been available (one day, there was no samsa; another night, no jiz biz), so go with an open mind. And do as other customers do: The restaurant doesn’t serve alcohol, but every table one recent night had brought bottle of vodka to share. —Chris Crowley
Lundy’s of Brooklyn (Red Hook)
The original Sheepshead Bay location of Lundy’s had a capacity for 2,800 diners; the new iteration in Red Hook, opened 17 years after the closure of the historic seafood palace, is giant in a different, inflation-adjusted way. The 100-seat restaurant is directly across from the Ikea dock with a large wooden bar in the front, a stage area with booths (live music coming soon), and a main dining room with white tablecloths on each group-size table. The space feels both grand and suburban. Even the food is huge: The shrimp in a shrimp-cocktail appetizer were the biggest I’ve ever seen, and a rotating seafood risotto — lobster on a recent night — overflowed with broth, making it almost bisquelike. Thick clam chowder, meanwhile, is made with the original Lundy Bros. recipe, and the dessert menu featuring a “famous” huckleberry pie for two is scanned right from the old restaurant. —Zach Schiffman
Mitsuru (West Village)
I don’t miss much about the years I spent working in a gray office building on Third Avenue in the East 40s, except for one thing: Sushi Yasuda, my favorite special-occasion lunch spot. Yasuda endures, but Mitsuru Tamura, who spent years running Yasuda’s sushi counter, now has a shingle of his own in the more charming Greenwich Village. Mitsuru occupies two good-size wood-paneled rooms just off Sixth Avenue, a little sushi chalet, where Tamura runs the $150-a-head omakase counter each night. The à la carte menu is succinct and familiar, and the hits still hit: Hand rolls arrive at the table with a little pile of seaweed to wrap yourself (try the seared toro with sweet-smoky Aleppo pepper oil), and Tamura’s version of Nobu’s black cod is on offer, though the sleeper hit is tempura-fried sea bass with ginger tartar sauce. The restaurant is a collaboration with Parcelle, which runs the deep list of sake and wine. If you’re flush enough to pair your hand rolls with 2016-vintage Agrapart Champagne, Lord knows I’m not going to stop you. —Matthew Schneier
Zimmi’s (West Village)
Maxime Pradié’s restrained old-world cooking wouldn’t be out of place in the countryside of Brittany or Provence, but it’s a similarly excellent fit for a West Village corner: a slice of salty pissaladière with a crisscross of anchovy, a puck of chunky-cut ratatouille, lamb stew on puréed potatoes. This might be the first restaurant in history where a side of lentils could be called a showstopper. The spare room — wooden chairs, green-checked tablecloths — and wine list get all the little details right (even the sparkling water, Velleminfroy from France, was selected, our server said, for its low pH, so that “its acid doesn’t fight with the wine”) while matching the rough-hewn mood, even if the crowd is fully of the city. Speaking of that crowd: It’s maybe not as hard to elbow aside all the other people trying to eat here as its reputation might lead you to believe. I set an OpenTable alert (no Resy here) about a week before I wanted to go and watched a steady trickle of available tables appear in my notifications. —Alan Sytsma
The Snail (Greenpoint)
Does Brooklyn need another bistro slinging oysters, shrimp cocktail, and steak tartare? Only if it’s as well executed as the Snail, which, tucked on the ground floor of a new apartment building, feels like something of a secret neighborhood spot, even if it happens to face McCarren Park. The Snail is not, however, an alternative to all the other Caesar-salad restaurants: It’s the best version you could hope for. It didn’t invent piling potato chips with ham, but its version is more than memorable, with thin, palm-size potato crisps and freshly sliced Broadbent ham that is less than a year old and salty in the way that you want alongside a Gilda-accented tuxedo. Booths and elevated tables make you feel like a main character, and every seat at the bar has a great view of the room and kitchen action. This is one place where you should order the chicken, a deboned half-bird seared until the skin is like bacon, and the meat stays juicy, plated with an abundance of dark, concentrated jus and soft-cooked garlic cloves. —Tammie Teclemariam
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