e a t e r y R O W

MELT SHOP
at the Citigroup Center
601 Lexington Avenue
New York, NY 10017
(212) 579-MELT

Nestled at the foot Citigroup Center, literally under Lexington Avenue, is Midtown's newest food spot, and the lines that spread forth into the plaza clearly demonstrate that it's a much wanted addition. You can't even see the storefront from the street, but that hasn't stopped people from heading there in droves (note, the photo below was taken at around 2:30pm, well after lunch). Melt Shop is the name and grilled cheese is the game. I grew up with grilled cheese sandwiches, as did pretty much everyone I know. They were a staple of my childhood and they've come to roost right here on 54th Street.



The Melt Shop menu focuses on varieties of the original grilled cheese and they go way beyond the tuna melt, though they have that, too. Roast beef, fried chicken, gruyere cheese, caramelized onions... the ingredient list takes the grill cheese away from its humble country-fried roots and into the cosmopolitan hub of New York. But of course, you have to start with the humble, country fried roots. And thusly did I first try The Classic. White bread, American cheese, pan fried. It's exactly the same way mom used to make, except that they used salted butter. By the way, "exactly the way mom used to make" ain't a bad thing. It means perfect. Following that, I pimped it out by getting all the additions I could dumped into it. I'll term it The Classic (Plus), but I hope that they'll name it after me. The classic plus tomato, caramelized onions and bacon. A. Maze. Ing. I love this. Like the classic on steroids. Or ecstacy. Beef 'N' Blue: roast beef, blue cheese, caramelized onions, horseradish on sourdough. Very good. Tangy blue cheese, some nose twitching horseradish. It was literally, one of the best warm sandwiches I've had in years. Buttermilk Fried Chicken Melt: buttermilk fried chicken, jalapeno-jack cheese, red cabbage cole slaw and melt sauce (whatever that is) on white bread. While still pretty good, this was the least impressive. The chicken got lost in the slaw and sauce and spice of the jalapeno.




Melt Shop, while not "expensive" in terms of real dollars, is pricey from a relative standpoint. The sandwiches, before tax, are about eight bucks. A Stumptown coffee milkshake is $5.50. They also serve breakfast.

[ © Copyright eateryROW 2011 ]

HILL COUNTRY CHICKEN
1123 Broadway
New York, NY 10010
(212) 257-6446

With the success of Hill Country Barbecue comes Hill Country Chicken, the second installment of good ol' boy soul food inspired by the Duke brothers, across the street from Madison Square Park on 25th Street and Broadway. This homage to depression era-greasy spoons is within spitting distance of the upscale food court Eataly, and if I had to choose between the two, I'd easily choose Hill Country.

There's no table service and with the downstairs closed at the time that I was there, not many tables, either. Everything is pre-made so you order your meal fast-food style. The thing is, there are so many people coming and going, sitting or taking their meal to go, that you're guaranteed to get the food fresh. The modern chandeliers and the credit card machines are the only things here that feel new. The floors are the yellow tile that remind one of an abandoned Waffle House and the tables are the faux-marble formica kind that Dwight Eisenhower's mom would have sat at while reading the Kansas Star Tribune.

You can get legs and thighs if you want to go the traditional route, but most people I saw were ordering the Texas Tenders baskets. They come in baskets of three, five or ten. I ordered the three. They. Were. Perfect. The batter was slightly flaky, but not crumbling-all-over-the-plate so and just slightly sweet. Inside, the chicken was about as far from dried out as one can get. You can choose from a honey mustard sauce, a barbecue sauce, or a ranch dressing sauce to dip the tenders in, but I almost say don't bother. Instead, head to the fixings station and grab a little hot sauce and honey. You won't regret it. The Buttermilk Biscuit was a natural accompaniment to the fried chicken, but was a little dry. If they had any butter, I'd have used it. Instead, I dipped it in the 'cue and some honey. Hill Country's side of Cole Slaw, which they give you a scoop the size of a baseball, was mediocre and tasteless. I washed all this down with a can of beer.

I returned the following day and ordered a Texas Hand Roll (and French Fries and a Pabst). Fried chicken, coleslaw, sweet and sour sauce, sesame seeds and almonds wrapped in a wrap. It was a little sweet... but awesome. Give it a healthy dose of hot sauce and you'll be in floating on cloud nine. The "small" size fries are huge. Huge and delicious. Slightly soggy, but so good. Perfectly salted.

Something Hill Country prides itself in are its pies. I tried two. First, the Bourbon Pecan Pie, which was so good it should be illegal, and, in keeping with the boozy theme, I followed that up with a slice of the Whiskey Buttermilk Pie. I wasn't sure what to expect, but my God. Smooth, sweet, heavenly.

Hill Country fools you into feeling cheaper than it is. You look at the menu and go "hey, that ain't too bad!" But the trick is that everything is a la carte. Everything is extra. A fried chicken breast is $5.50 and a wing is $1.75 with drumsticks and thighs in-between. If you were to order enough to piece together your own chicken, it would run you $26.

My dinner, a three-piece chicken tenders, plus the biscuit, plus the cole slaw, plus one can of beer, plus a slice of pie (plus tax) was about $24.

BLUE WATER GRILL

31 Union Square West
New York, NY 10003
(212) 675-9500

Speeds' birthday was around the corner and since she wasn't planning to be in the city, let alone have a party, so I decided to take her to Blue Water Grill. We both like seafood, and should the name have failed to tip you off, that's what they do. If Blue Water Grill, with it's huge marble ionic columns, flowing blue flag and enough brass to rim a battleship creates the assumption that it's a pricey joint, then let me put that assumption to rest. It is. Appetizers average $15 and entrees average $28.

Blue Water Grill is an exemplar of the diversity of Union Square. Alongside the Union Square Cafe, it's about as traditional a dining experience as New York can offer. Meanwhile, Coffee Shop and Republic attract the young and the trendy. Between them all is McDonald's. The park is the home to a hundred starving artists selling paintings and legitimately-starving homeless selling nothing. The park is also home to the largest green-market in the city.

Blue Water Grill is huge. It's three floors and has live jazz every day. We got there relatively early, around 6:30 and they filled up almost completely by 8. Shockingly, this was on a Tuesday. It blows me away that restaurants which are far more affordable and which occupy a fraction of the real estate are dropping like flies across the city, but Blue Water Grill is still packing them in. Yet packing them in they were.

We started out with a half-dozen Oregon Kumamoto Oysters and a Lobster Bisque. Kumamoto oysters are small, very light, and just about salt-free. These are far removed from the large, briny east-coast oysters you find at most raw bars. The lobster bisque was excellent and would have been more so, except that it was served with these little leek and lobster beignets which really didn't belong. It tasted like a lobster-flavored dough ball... which is exactly what it was, and I could have done without them. I recommend the bisque, I just also happen to recommend picking these out.

My entree was the Sesame Crusted Big Eye Tuna with a tahini spinach and Asian pears in a miso broth. On the one hand, it was very good, on the other, the chef went a little overboard with the sesame crust miso soup that it sat in. Still, overall, quite good. Speeds ordered the Pecan Crusted Mahi-Mahi served with butternut squash, cavalero nero (which, on the menu was oddly misspelled as cavalnero) a spinach-like dark green vegetable in a pancetta sage vinaigrette. The cavalero was oddly dry, almost like a sheet of seaweed, which maybe was intentional, but I didn't care for it that way. Other than that, the mahi-mahi was excellent. It's a very mild fish and pairing it with the butternut squash puree could either be viewed as either overpowering its flavor or as a much-needed accompaniment.

For dessert we split the Warm Molten Chocolate Cake, which came crowned by a malt crunch ice cream, which was fantastic; like eating an ice cream made from the crispy part of a Nestle Crunch bar. Meanwhile, the cake, which was closer to a brownie in texture than to cake and which bled across the plate, was just what I wanted with my coffee to round out the meal. It wasn't too sweet or too dark, too rich or too light. It was probably the best chocolate cake I've had this year.