Ottos Tacos

Like many parts of the US, NYC has strong Central American cultural influences. In the Lower East Side where we are staying, there are more Puerto Rican flags than US flags, and you're more likely to hear Spanish than English spoken. There are also heaps of great Mexican restaurants and taquerias.

Ottos Tacos is a little taqueria in East Village that only serves little corn tacos. Otto is not the first name that springs to mind when I think of Mexican food, but at least he knows how to make a good taco. These tacos are much smaller than a burrito meaning that you typically have 3-4 for a meal. This is great because you get to try a number of different tacos in the one sitting. 

I love their house made corn tortillas - they are a bit thicker than a typical flour tortilla but only the size of a small saucer. I also love the freshness of the tacos - raw onion, fresh coriander and lime juice with the shrimp and chicken tacos, add avocado for the pork and beef, with chipotle mayo on the side. 

The chicken and prawn are the pick of the tacos - both are barbecued and go well with the light, fragrant toppings. 

Action shot mid-taco.  

Ottos evokes the baja-style Mexican food of southern California. Rather than sitting on a busy Manhattan street, you could be relaxing on Venice beach watching the crazy people and the waves roll in.

Mighty Quinn's Barbecue

What I love about eating in NYC is the variety of dining options available. What ever you feel like, chuck it into google, and you'll be directed to the nearest restaurant or take out place serving the subject of your hankering. There are perhaps hundreds of different cuisines and food ethnicities represented amongst the 30,000 restaurants in NYC. Well today I had a hankering for slow cooked meat.



Barbecue is another quintessentially American food, involving the slow smoking and roasting of meat (typically beef and pork) over wood or charcoal at a low temperature. This allows fatty and tough cuts of meat to become amazingly moist and tender while the wood imparts smoky flavour through the meat.

Definitely different to what we call a barbie - uncle Fred burning the snags on his trusty 4 burner on Boxing Day. Yes, I know it has gourmet-ed up since I was a kid but the point still stands.
 
The Americans take their barbecue very seriously, especially in the south. There are  numerous barbecue places in the city, but many cater for the tourists and don't follow the traditional techniques that are so integral to the outcome.

Mighty Quinn's Barbecue is a great unpretentious barbeque place in east village. You line up to be served canteen style as your plate gets piled high with a choice of brisket, pulled pork, burned ends or ribs. Slaw is a staple pairing with barbecue, as is some form of picked veggie (onions or cucumbers) but the best side is the epically rich pecan and maple sweet potato mash. It's so sweet and fudgy it could be a dessert.


Now the meat. The ribs are glazed in sweet barbeque sauce and are so deliciously tender that they fall of the bone. The brisket is also juicy and tender, but my favourite are the smoked pork cheeks. The smoky flavour is prominent but not overpowering, and the shape of the cheek is conserved during the cooking so that you can imagine the jowly face of the pig whence they came.  

How about a closeup of the ribs




 You can see the smoky pork cheek peeking out of Nic's bun
There is just so much right about American barbecue. And its relatively cheap too, considering time and effort involved in preparing the meat this way.

Burgers

Time to knock off another of the big ones. Like pizza, burgers are ubiquitous in NYC. Every bar (pub), deli/bodega (corner store) and take away shop does a burger, and then there are the fast food joints, and the multitude of specialty burger places that offer more upmarket burgers.

To be honest, we haven't frequented too many fast food joints purely because there are so many other food options that it seems a waste of a meal to buy a $1.99 burger of dubious quality.

We have had some ripper burgers so far, from an epic salmon fillet burger in Montreal to juicy, towering beefy beasts that take a whole pint to wash down.

However, you can't beat a classic bacon cheeseburger - glossy brioche bun, juicy beef patty cooked medium, melted cheese, fried onion, crispy bacon and tangy pickles - served with a side of red cabbage slaw and fries. The key to a good burger is the fat content of the patty. It has to be relatively fatty to ensure that the burger stays juicy, and we all know that fat makes stuff taste good. 

This one is from Bareburger in East Village - probably the finest burger purveyor we have found so far. 

Shake shack is a fast-foody place that operates out of Madison Square Park in the Flatiron district. They do classic american food - burgers, hot dogs, shakes and fries - but be prepared for the wait. On weekends, the line can stretch out the park and the wait can be over an hour. Its worthwhile checking out shackcam (http://www.shakeshack.com/location/madison-square-park/#shack-cam) beforehand to check the line.

The burgers are simple small affairs with squishy buns. Yes they are great, but no, I wouldn't wait an hour in line for one. However it's a great location where you can eat outside and people watch as the line slowly moves past. 

Mmmm... Burger...

One day when I was feeling particularly adventurous I even tried a veggie burger. This wasn't a stodgy, cooked from frozen slopfest like some veggie burgers inevitably are. It was made from beetroot, and looked and tasted surprisingly like a normal meat burger.

Coffee in the Big Apple

Coffee is an important part of many people's lives, including mine. Ahh, the satisfaction every morning of caffeine hitting your bloodstream, crossing the blood-brain-barrier and stimulating your central nervous system - banishing lingering drowsiness and increasing your alertness and mood. Of all the drugs to be addicted to, coffee's not to bad, right?

We are lucky in Australia to have a plethora of good coffee shops/cafes serving excellent espresso based beverages as well as pour overs. Its not just the big cities either - acceptable coffees, and, with some research great coffees, can now be had in many regional areas.

Historically, the US drank its coffee from drip filters or percolators in big mugs, and espresso based coffee was confined to specialist cafes and Italian places. Then the espresso revolution swept through, and big chains like Starbucks and The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf took hold. Unfortunately, while they are capable of doing a passable espresso, as soon as the milk gets involved, things start to unravel. Firstly the servings are massive - the smallest latte at Starbucks, the 'tall' is 12 fl oz, while the largest (venti) is 20 fl oz, nearly 600 mL!! Secondly, the milk is not correctly textured - it is foamy and bubbly and looks like the Cataract Gorge after a heavy rain. Finally, the coffees are so weak, mainly because of the volume of milk involved. 

So, New York. Its somewhat of a latecomer to the espresso based coffee culture that is such a feature of Australia and New Zealand's big cities. However, it is catching up fast, and new cafes/coffee shops are opening up all the time that serve excellent coffee.

(from top, clockwise: Laughing Man Espresso in Tribeca (part owned by Hugh Jackman!), small latte, cuppuccino, cortado)

Here's a handy guide for navigating the coffee in NYC:

Lattes are typically bigger than in Aus/NZ - make sure you ask for a small (8-12 fl oz), or else you'll end up with something resembling a soup bowl. They are not always served in a glass, sometimes in a cuppuccino cup. 

Cuppuccinos are really just smaller lattes (6-8 fl oz), but with the same espresso content, so typically a bit stronger. No chocolate sprinkles to be seen.

If you like your coffee a bit stronger like me, you can either order a latte with an extra shot, or get a Cortado (4-6 fl oz), which is similar to our piccolo latte. They also go by Gibraltar. 

The good coffee shops tend to pull double ristrettos, so if you want a double shot as we know it, you will end up with essentially 4 ristrettos, which is the same volume as a double espresso. They gave me some funny looks when I confirmed that yes, I want 4 shots in my small latte, but it really isn't any stronger than a double latte back home. 

Here are some photos of a few of the dozens of cafes we have sampled in the last month and on previous visits. Rather than list them all, I've created a Coffee Map with all of the places that has received my tick of approval.

(Aussie-run Bluebird coffee in Lower East Side). 

(Little Collins in Midtown East - complete with a stolen street sign and cool bench-integrated espresso machine - another Aussie run cafe killing it over here)

(Gasoline Alley in Nolita. Bike hanging up - check, hipster looking barista - check, epic La Marzocco machine - check!)