Results tagged: Obika

// This Week on Savory Cities //

We stopped in to the new sushi-bar inspired Italian mozzarella emporium Obika this past week to try out the goods. Our advice: give it some time.

The habit of staying close to home when it comes to searching out brunch can be overpowering. Next weekend it may be time to put on your walking shoes. Elizabeth S. Bennett finds Trestle on Tenth's bacon-onion rösti with house-made pork sausage, Gruyere and eggs absolutely worth the trek over to the far west side.

In recent years a number of Napa Valley restaurants having been giving Thomas Keller and company a run for their money in attracting the big spenders. Among them is the excellent Restaurant at Meadowood, located on the grounds of the beautiful Meadowood resort in St. Helena. Chef Christopher Kostow's luxurious Napa Valley-inspired menu was designed with one thing in mind - to keep customers happy. Find out more about the Restaurant at Meadowood in our new video.

// Recently Opened // 

• Dogmatic Sausage System - Inspired by a Bleecker Street sausage cart overseen by Employees Only chef Jeremy Spector this new Union Square restaurant serves sausages and asparagus spears stuff into toasted artisan bread. The enterprise is backed by Brad Blum, a former CEO of Burger King.
• Fulton - A new high-end seafood restaurant on the Upper East Side from the owner of Citarella.
• Kambi Ramen House - The owner of Minca brings us this larger and "more comfortable" East Village ramen shop.
• Motorino - Wood-fired pizza by chef Mathieu Palombino (BLT Fish, Bouley) in Williamsburg. 
• Pranna - New in the Flatiron District, chef Chai Trivedi (Sapa) is showcasing the cuisines of Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and India. Desserts are by Jehangir Mehta of Graffiti.
• Via dei Mille -A stylish SoHo Italian run by the former owners of the nightclub Stereo.

// This Week's Restaurant Reviews //

• NY Times: Frank Bruni heads to Upper East Side vegetarian, Candle 79 (1 of 4 stars). "After a series of recent meals here, I'm not ready to relinquish my Roquefort or swear off sirloins: I'm just not that virtuous. But I'll admit that I, like most of my restaurant-critic kin, haven't given vegan cuisine its due. Candle 79, which has prospered for five years without benefit of major reviews, showed me the light, or maybe I should say lite."
• Pete Wells files for $25 and Under, reviewing No. 7 in Brooklyn. "No. 7 is a comfortable restaurant with comfortable prices, but it is not doing comfort food. It is doing big-city, night-on-the-town chef food. The economy may be regressing, but that doesn't mean our diets have to."
• NY Magazine: Adam Platt is disappointed by Allegretti (1 of 5 stars). "Zero stars for the Westchester-style décor. One star for the cooking, which is good, in a dated Continental way, though not spectacular."
• NY Post: Steve Cuozzo returns for another meal at Benoit at the request of the management and finds not much has changed. "My two return visits did unlock the secret to getting a great meal at Benoit: All you need is to have globetrotting Ducasse fly in and personally supervise your dishes." But when Ducasse isn't in the house he finds that, "Onion soup was ruined by a cheese crust so burnt that it tasted like cigar ash. Even the mac and cheese with ham, which I enthused over last spring, had lost its bubbling freshness, having been overcooked or reheated."

// Events Around Town //

• The First EverAnnual Slow Food NYC "Slow Drink Week" October 27th - November 2nd. Kick off the cocktail week at Pegu Club with esteemed mixologists and authors, Dale De Groff, David Wondrich, and Gary Regan competing in a "mix-off." Tickets for the SFNYC Slow Drink Week Launch Reception at Pegu Club are available online at www.brownpapertickets.com. Slow Food Members pay $40, non-members, $50.
• John's of 12th Street celebrates their 100 year anniversary on October 23rd and they'll be rolling back to 1908 prices. That means menu items will all be priced under $1. Hours are 11am - 4pm.

Obika, while an excellent concept, needs more time to turn things from being completely unhinged into a smooth and enjoyable dining experience. Basically everything that could have gone wrong at Obika today did: outlandishly long waits to place and receive orders and pay checks; multiple menu items not available, including those "exquisite orbs" traditional mozzarella di bufala DOP; an overly sour Vermont mozzarella, and on and on. I'll be kind and leave out numerous other misfires that had me and all of my neighbors experiencing varying levels of anger and frustration throughout lunch today. The main culprit, I was told, was that some of the waitstaff didn't show up today.

The unavailability of Obika's signature mozzerella an hour into lunch service and a lackluster Vermont mozzarella notwithstanding, having only one server covering the entire restaurant was a pretty massive error in judgment. Only opening the circular bar and the seats at the communal table, and leaving the window seating empty, would have allowed our hapless server to maintain at least some semblance of control. Sure a few people would have been turned away, but that sure beats dissapointing, and in some cases angering, a large number of new customers.

If you're dying to check out Obika, my advice would be to give them at least a week to get quality issues worked out and their service staff committed and trained. You might also want to call ahead to make sure that they've got plenty of Italian mozzarella on hand. Once they do we'll be back to see if the Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP lives up to the hype.