e a t e r y R O W

Captain's Table Launch Party

at City Grit

WhyHunger and Captain Morgan invited me to the launch of their new charity, Captain's Table. Partnered with James Beard Award winning Chef Hugh Acheson of Top Chef fame, the charity encourages the gluttons and the drunks, the foodies and the imbibers of America to create and share recipes. WhyHunger is a non-profit grassroots group dedicated to ending hunger by creating access to affordable nutritious food at a locavore level.  

This holiday season, every time any of you readers use the hashtag #CaptainsTable on Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest, $1 will be transferred from the wallet of Captain Morgan and into the wallet of WhyHunger. So start giving away some corporate money!

When I can't go to an event, I send my intrepid reporter Emma in my stead. Hosted at the supper club City Grit, Emma dined on rum infused recipes of rabbit and duck as well as rum drinks designed to inspire the kind of things that you can create when hashtagging #CaptainsTable and sharing your creations! Thanks for the pics Emma!

BALKANIKA

691 Ninth Avenue

New York, NY 10036

(212) 974-0300

Like the wines that they serve, wine bars come in a variety of flavors. Some are dark and romantic, some are youthful and trendy, some are simple and local, some are destination spots. Balkanika manages to be none of them. As its name implies, Balkanika is a Hell's Kitchen wine bar/bistro that focuses its attention on wines and food from Eastern Europe. Before my excursion here, I'd no idea that Slovakia or Croatia or Macedonia had vineyards, let alone vineyards that made good wine. But they do and you can try it here.

Myna and I had tickets to a show and were running late. We had hoped to get a seat at Riposo46, our go to spot for quick west midtown pre-theater boozing, but they were packed solid. I pulled out my trusty OpenTable app and snagged us a seat a few blocks north. Had I known that Balkanika was on Savored, I'd have reserved that way instead and saved 20%. Next time. 

Inside, Balkanika is dark and loud, but not so loud that you can't have a normal conversation; it's lively, not hushed. It's not romantic the way some wine bars are or at least try to be. It's playful. The rather large menu is a mix of eastern European small plates and cheeses. Since we were rushed, Myna and I only got a single glass of wine each and a few bites, but we were impressed enough that we are sure to return.

We started with a Paprika Walnut Meze. Looking like either a plate of vomit or a cow pie that someone stuck an olive on top of, it couldn't have appeared less appetizing if it tried. Still, the dish was actually very good and with its accompanying lightly toasted pita bread, it was a filling way to begin our rushed meal. Next was a Spinach Burek, a filo dough pie stuffed with spinach and feta cheese. Delicious. You don't even have to love spinach to like this dish. You just have to like pastry and cheese. Last but not least, we tried Balkanika's Pepper Dolma, a yellow bell pepper stuffed with ground beef, rice, tomato, carrots, and onions, and in a light tomato sauce. I practically grew up on stuffed peppers and I almost never see them on a menu so I had to try this one. It was incredible. It is certainly the best stuffed pepper I can remember having and I simply can't recommend it enough.

By the time that the end came, we lamented that we had to skedaddle. Balkanika is one of those places you could literally sit in for hours with friends drinking wine and eating the comfort food of your grandparents. Or at least the comfort food of my grandparents. Take your grandparents. They'll probably like the place. 

PENTHOUSE 808

Ravel Hotel

808 Queens Plaza South

Long Island City, NY 11101

(718) 289-6101

It's getting cold and the opportunities to enjoy an outside drink, even on a heated roof with a view that puts Manhattan establishments to shame, are dwindling. With that in mind, Myna and I raced over to Penthouse 808, the rooftop Asian fusion restaurant on the top floor of Long Island City's Ravel Hotel. The Ravel sits on the northern, more industrial end of Long Island City, close to the Queensboro Bridge (sorry, Ed, I just can't say it). It's hardly a cute area and it's eerily deserted at night. But being a quick, ten minute walk from the F train means that your only excuse for not being willing to make the trip is that you're either lazy or a coward. The Ravel is one of the new, hip hotels catering to trendy twenty-something out-of-towners who you will find mingling downstairs in the lounge enjoying a glass of wine from one of the dozen bottles available from the wine vending machines. $12 a glass, served in Reidels. We turned the corner from them and headed to the elevator, hit the top button, and walked out into the restaurant, a loud, busy, dark place completely nothing like the surrounding empty area. Well... other than the dark.

While Myna was led to a table, I ran outside to grab a few photos while no one was mingling. I imagine that in the summer this place is packed. Tonight, although a dozen or so people were outside drinking and hanging out, everyone was eating indoors. The inside, with its leather sofa booths and solarium glass ceiling, was very cool. Our rickety table was an annoying pain in the ass, but if, as our waitress told us, they plan to renovate in two months anyway, I imagine that they'll be soon be sending it to the big Ikea in the sky. Speaking of our waitress, she was very friendly, prompt, was there when we needed her, and not hovering overhead when we didn't. If only the staff at Sons of Essex would follow her example.

The menu at Penthouse 808 is a standard Asian fusion one. The truth is, if you've eaten just about anywhere else that calls itself Asian fusion, you've already had this food, and most likely a better version of it. That's not to say that it wasn't fine. It was fine. It was, sadly, not better than fine, which at Penthouse 808's price-point is a problem. When we ordered our meal, three dishes which we shared, we asked that they all be brought out as they were finished in the kitchen. Yet one of the dishes, the Grilled Pork Spare Ribs, were nowhere near hot. Lukewarm maybe. Either they were waiting to deliver this to our table so that everything else could finish and arrive together at the table, or the spare ribs here were an extra from a previous order. But even if the food had arrived hot, it was still far too fatty. I usually love spare ribs and the sugary glaze that these were in was pretty tasty, but being cold and fatty didn't do it any favors.

These days, any restaurant with sushi has to have, I assume by law, a gimmicky sushi roll menu with rolls named after local streets, local landmarks, local celebrities, and so on and so forth. We went for the less locally monikered Gotham Roll: tuna, cucumber, avocado, and jalapeno under a drizzle of a tangy sauce. And it was good. Unlike the spare ribs at least it was supposed to be cold. It was big and heavy and we felt like we were getting our money's worth. Finally, the Marinated Skirt Steak Flatbread, a rectangular skirt steak pizza with mozzarella, pico de gallo, and chimichuri. While Myna thought that the crust was too crispy for her taste, it didn't bother me, and it was easily the best of the three plates that we ate here.

In the end, we had a very fun time. The view was amazing and is the main reason people choose rooftop dining. But Penthouse 808 ain't the fine dining that Windows on the World might have provided. It's young and trendy and overpriced and cliche and the menu is generic. It's so loud from the blasting music that you'd be yelling across the able to your girlfriend except that she's not across the table but sitting diagonally with your knees touching and you still have to yell. It's dark. It wants you to drink and mingle and bring your friends who live in the boondocks so that they can look out across the river in awe. It wants you to party and take sexy glitterdress photos with a skyline backdrop and post those photos all over Instagram and Facebook. You aren't paying attention to your $13 glass of Bailey's that's mostly ice because it's your birthday or your graduation or a promotion party and one of your ten friends bought a round of kamikaze shots for the table and WOO!!!

Anyway, to answer your question, yes I'd still go back.

Our meal was three plates, two cocktails, one beer, and one $13 glass of Bailey's that was mostly ice. With tax and tip, the total came to $105.