As the old saying once went, “A you’re alright, B you’re brave, C you’re crazy, D you’re dead.” It’s not news that Alphabet City is no longer the minefield of socioeconomic misfortune it once was, but even today, when the focal point for gentrification outrage has migrated to Brooklyn neighborhoods like Bushwick and Crown Heights, there’s still a surprising amount of upheaval happening on the east side of Manhattan.

Avenue A is as established as Central Park West (hell, even the rhyme couldn’t find anything negative to say about it). Avenue B, for its part, was once a pleasingly lawless strip – close enough to the safety of A for a quick escape but darker, studded with rowdier bars, velvet-curtained second-floor hideouts, and those mystery loft/storefront/abandoned tenement spaces that drew band practices and parties. Now, that velvet-lined den is a well-marked, bowties-and-arm-garters cocktail lounge and Tompkins Square Park is home to hipster hockey leagues.

But even three short years ago, Avenue C was another story, a country unto itself where brand-name pharmacies and supermarkets still feared to tread. Between the Laundromats and bodegas were long stretches of rusting fire escapes, graffiti murals featuring neighborhood heroes, not rock idols, and families picnicking on their stoops. Since then, a smaller, more interesting kind of takeover has happened, one not led by kids looking for the next cheap buzz but by food and drink pioneers looking for a quiet space to do their own thing.

At Bobwhite Lunch & Supper Counter (94 Ave. C; bobwhitecounter.com), that thing is a concept that, by all rights, should be old news. All fried chicken, all the time? Hold on a second, Dirty Bird, Hill Country Chicken, all five locations of BonChon and Charles’ Pan-Fried just called to invite you to 2008. But what Bobwhite has done is subtler, more exciting than simply lodging another vote in the brine-or-no-brine debate. They’ve built an old-fashioned lunch counter straight out of small-town Virginia in an elegant, modern space – no tired red plastic baskets and gingham to be found. Fried chicken dinners come with a buttermilk biscuit, honey, hot sauce or the mustardy relish called chow chow for customization; sides include Brunswick stew, a homely regional favorite that includes tomatoes, corn and pork.

Edi & the Wolf (102 Ave. C; ediandthewolf.com) is another unexpected space, this one tying the nouveau industrial aesthetic of dark wood and iron to bright, big windows and bunches of side-of-the-road greenery dotting the communal table. Perhaps because Austrian cuisine’s reputation is still tied to hearty schnitzels and sausages, Edi’s food manages to be both authentic and innovative, depending on who you ask. The schnitzel is there, but so is a farmer’s cheese and pumpkin seed spread to share, and wild mushroom ravioli with grilled chard.

And while cocktail atavism is big business on the LES and across Manhattan, with “original formulation” spirits and ungarnished Old-Fashioneds the only way to go, nobody is going as far, and having as much fun, as Evelyn Drinkery (171 Ave. C; evelynnyc.com). Skip way over Prohibition, past the Roaring Twenties and back into the late 19th century and you’ll find the phosphate, the soda fountain standby that added an acid tang to everything from cola to claret. Evelyn plays with these in a number of cocktails dispensed through a CO2 tank for light, fizzy refreshers that belie the complex combinations of bitters, spirits and house-processed juices underneath. For the New Yorker’s take on the soda fountain, there are also egg creams, made with infused milks and flavored syrups to take on not just the old classic (in which they rightly use Fox’s U-Bet rather than making their own), but Earl Grey tea, an Orange Julius, and the root beer float.

Avenue C still feels like home for the families and the Laundromats, and in these heady days it’s easy to believe that the neighborhood will find its own balance, keeping out the cheap beer holes and encouraging the pioneers looking for a little room to express themselves. If not, there’s always Avenue D.

As the old saying once went, “A you’re alright, B you’re brave, C you’re crazy, D you’re dead.” It’s not news that Alphabet City is no longer the minefield of socioeconomic misfortune it once was, but even today, when the focal point for gentrification outrage has migrated to Brooklyn neighborhoods like Bushwick and Crown Heights, there’s still a surprising amount of upheaval happening on the east side of Manhattan.
Avenue A is as established as Central Park West (hell, even the rhyme couldn’t find anything negative to say about it). Avenue B, for its part, was once a pleasingly lawless strip – close enough to the safety of A for a quick escape but darker, studded with rowdier bars, velvet-curtained second-floor hideouts, and those mystery loft/storefront/abandoned tenement spaces that drew band practices and parties. Now, that velvet-lined den is a well-marked, bowties-and-arm-garters cocktail lounge and Tompkins Square Park is home to hipster hockey leagues.
But even three short years ago, Avenue C was another story, a country unto itself where brand-name pharmacies and supermarkets still feared to tread. Between the Laundromats and bodegas were long stretches of rusting fire escapes, graffiti murals featuring neighborhood heroes, not rock idols, and families picnicking on their stoops. Since then, a smaller, more interesting kind of takeover has happened, one not led by kids looking for the next cheap buzz but by food and drink pioneers looking for a quiet space to do their own thing.
At Bobwhite Lunch & Supper Counter (94 Ave. C; bobwhitecounter.com), that thing is a concept that, by all rights, should be old news. All fried chicken, all the time? Hold on a second, Dirty Bird, Hill Country Chicken, all five locations of BonChon and Charles’ Pan-Fried just called to invite you to 2008. But what Bobwhite has done is subtler, more exciting than simply lodging another vote in the brine-or-no-brine debate. They’ve built an old-fashioned lunch counter straight out of small-town Virginia in an elegant, modern space – no tired red plastic baskets and gingham to be found. Fried chicken dinners come with a buttermilk biscuit, honey, hot sauce or the mustardy relish called chow chow for customization; sides include Brunswick stew, a homely regional favorite that includes tomatoes, corn and pork.
Edi & the Wolf (102 Ave. C; ediandthewolf.com) is another unexpected space, this one tying the nouveau industrial aesthetic of dark wood and iron to bright, big windows and bunches of side-of-the-road greenery dotting the communal table. Perhaps because Austrian cuisine’s reputation is still tied to hearty schnitzels and sausages, Edi’s food manages to be both authentic and innovative, depending on who you ask. The schnitzel is there, but so is a farmer’s cheese and pumpkin seed spread to share, and wild mushroom ravioli with grilled chard.
And while cocktail atavism is big business on the LES and across Manhattan, with “original formulation” spirits and ungarnished Old-Fashioneds the only way to go, nobody is going as far, and having as much fun, as Evelyn Drinkery (171 Ave. C; evelynnyc.com). Skip way over Prohibition, past the Roaring Twenties and back into the late 19th century and you’ll find the phosphate, the soda fountain standby that added an acid tang to everything from cola to claret. Evelyn plays with these in a number of cocktails dispensed through a CO2 tank for light, fizzy refreshers that belie the complex combinations of bitters, spirits and house-processed juices underneath. For the New Yorker’s take on the soda fountain, there are also egg creams, made with infused milks and flavored syrups to take on not just the old classic (in which they rightly use Fox’s U-Bet rather than making their own), but Earl Grey tea, an Orange Julius, and the root beer float.
Avenue C still feels like home for the families and the Laundromats, and in these heady days it’s easy to believe that the neighborhood will find its own balance, keeping out the cheap beer holes and encouraging the pioneers looking for a little room to express themselves. If not, there’s always Avenue D.

Picture an American chef. He falls in love with a cuisine from another country, travels to that country for a few heady months, takes copious notes (maybe studies with a few locals), then opens his own restaurant offering the real deal back here in the city. It’s a common scenario these days; in a restaurant-dense economy like New York, the prospect of an untapped vein of culinary interest is hard to resist. It’s also one that’s hotly debated, with critics coming down hard on chefs who dare to move in on someone else’s slice of the cultural pie.
That criticism almost always falls on restaurateurs who take on the cuisine of a group that has traditionally existed outside the fine-dining orbit. Think of Eddie Huang’s beef with Marcus Samuelsson, an Ethiopian-born Swede who purported to bring old-school Harlem chic to his Red Rooster. Or Andy Ricker, whose gap year stint in Thailand led to his Pok Pok restaurants, at which authenticity is the watchword on everything from ingredients to tableware. But how many chefs are there running Italian restaurants who’ve never met a Silician nonna, let alone been raised by one? Can Keith McNally roll his Rs, and did that affect his ability to create the perfect French bistro in Soho?
Somehow, once the culinary conversation moves to Europe, cross-pollination becomes the norm. Studying with chefs in other countries is a badge of honor, rather than a back-alley entrance to someone else’s party; the number of chefs who are riding the coattails of their stage period at Copenhagen’s Noma alone could fill the three-story Times Square Olive Garden several times over. What’s the difference? About 200 years of established practice is all that separates the two worlds; it’s about time we acknowledged that passion and respect are all it takes for a chef – any chef – to try to step into another cuisine. Whether he’s successful? That’s up to the diner.
Thankfully for Seamus Mullen, he found his inspiration in Spain, a perfectly acceptable region for a young chef from New England to tour, fall in love with, and want to spend his career trying to recreate. It worked out for us, too, as Tertulia (tertulianyc.com; 359 6th Ave.), his take on the sidrerias of northern Spain, captures all of the right notes of those cheery public houses with food that is at times more essentially Spanish-tasting than what can be found there. Patatas bravas, for example, are usually dressed with a smoky red pimenton sauce and a bright, garlicky allioli; like so much pub food, the allure is in the condiments. But at Tertulia, the potatoes are coated in the paprika itself, building a crackly, spicy base of flavor atop which the allioli sings counterpoint, rather than carrying the show.
Wine flows from taps and is served in wide-bottomed tumblers; there is, of course, Spanish cider from a barrel, which tastes more like a vin jaune than the sugar-sweet Woodchuck of your youth. Ragged red brick and Moorish tiles line the walls, and the back corner is dominated by a tiled chimney and grill, on which the magic happens. Without smoking out the room, that grill captures all of the earthy, wild flavors of the north Atlantic coast in dishes as diverse as grilled prawns lightly dressed with olive oil and sea salt and a lamb shank that is braised first and dressed with Moorish flavors of sweet dried fruit and vinegar.
There is paella (technically Valencian – breathe a sigh of relief that the authenticity police aren’t around) in a shallow pan that allows for an admirable quantity of socarrat, the burnished crust of rice that is the true prize. And there is jamon and chorizo for days, presented lovingly on wooden boards or tossed in with chickpeas, Brussels sprouts, and more. But most importantly, there are large groups whose raised voices and laughter never grate, a front bar that can get crowded but never claustrophobic, and solicitous service that always feels genuine. That may be the hardest thing to replicate in the city, and Mullen has done it. Who cares where he was born?

The rule of thumb for most Chinatown restaurants is that the more nondescript the interior, the better the food. The best handmade noodles are found in an underground den where the chefs sit out in the dining room, forming dumplings on massive sheet pans during the off hours. There are superlative wontons to be found in a corner diner that huddles directly under the sooty rumble of the Manhattan Bridge. Torn linoleum and stained formica tabletops are tangible evidence the place has been used and loved by hundreds of regulars over time, proof that all of the staff’s attention is focused on the food, not on building an atmosphere.
Discerning patrons would thus be forgiven for looking askance at Shanghai Café’s (100 Mott St., betw. Canal & Hester Sts.) gleaming interior, groovy recessed neon lighting and dark wood booths. Somehow, though, they’ve struck an impossible balance between style and substance.
It’s not all glitz and glamour. To start, order the Kau Fu, a haphazard mound of ragged chunks of wheat gluten studded with black mushrooms, an abomination in brown that would look more at home in a subway grate than on your polished table. It’s delicious—brightly savory, the gluten its own wonderfully dense texture, a meat substitute that hasn’t been forced to masquerade as chicken—and magnificently ugly. There are, of course, “steamed tiny buns,” delicate soup dumplings, in plain pork or pork and crab variations. The waiters are trained, in fact, to check all diners who somehow overlook them when ordering. “You want soup dumplings,” they say, a directive, not a question. You almost certainly do—and if you do, get the pork and crab variation, which adds a note of oceanic salt to the rich, fatty broth—but if you don’t, they won’t press the issue. They’ll just give you more of those sidelong glances.
Don’t let the wait staff steer you for long, though, or they’ll drive you right past the “house specialties” section of the menu. It’s here that you see the full breadth of Shanghainese cooking and the subtle ways in which it varies from other Chinese regions; more sweet, more pickles, less spice. All main ingredients are listed, so you’ll know, more or less, what you’re getting, if not how. Braised pork belly is red-cooked to the point of ludicrous tenderness, waiting for the merest nudge to dissolve into sweet, melting shreds. Bean curd skin with preserved vegetable and green bean is flat, tagliatelle-like ribbons of bean curd tossed with shredded greens and edamame, an unexpectedly light, fresh preparation. A daintily plated version could easily be passed off as the latest in Sino-Italian fusion in a den of innovation like Torrisi Italian Specialties.
You can have your salted pork two ways, though deciphering the difference between the two is like playing a Highlights matching game: one version comes with cabbage, the other with Shanghai baby cabbage. The secret is that Shanghai baby cabbage is bok choy, while plain old cabbage is just that. Surprisingly, the regular cabbage is the way to go; oversized lardons of bacon are hidden among hefty slices of crisp, just-cooked Napa cabbage, the meaty pork offsetting the cool, faintly bitter crunch of the veg. The sweeter, milder bok choy can’t quite stand up to the pork in the same way.
Beer here comes in one flavor, Tsingtao, and tea is served in glasses, albeit ones made of actual glass. There is a surprisingly serviceable array of fresh fruit shakes and bubble teas for those who insist on dessert before they leave the table, but a better bet is to give yourself the breathing room to walk down to a specialty shop like Kung Fu Tea (234 Canal St., betw. Baxter & Centre Sts.) for all your brightly colored beverage needs.

One of New York City’s most curious native establishments is the steam-table deli. Sprouting like mushrooms wherever offices can be found, these one-size-fits-all, in-and-out lunch factories are baffling novelties to visitors. Where did they come from? How can so many of them co-exist in such a small area? How can the same place make sandwiches, sushi, bi-bim-bap, lasagna and roast turkey every day – and how could any of it possibly be good?

The answer to all of these questions is one simple word: Lunch. There are so many of these places because it’s unthinkable to go farther than three blocks away from the office just to eat something. Their selections are so schizophrenic to keep workers from realizing that they’ve trapped themselves into a rut deeper than a monster-truck tread. We have time-crunched ourselves into this convenience corner, and now the midday meal has become a race to see how quickly you can get back to your desk and hoover something out of a plastic clamshell container without ever taking their eyes off of Excel.

We’re calling for a return to the heady days of the power lunch, when Very Important people knew noon was time to toss back a couple of martinis and rub elbows with other Very Important People in high-ceilinged, velvet-trimmed dining rooms. Not just for the Very Important anymore, these days most of the city’s hottest, most well-respected restaurants are quietly serving amazing meals in the middle of the day to those brave few who dare to break free from the tether. Ready to join the revolution? There are just a few simple guidelines you need to know:

• Skip the line.  At night, Il Buco Alimentari & Vineria (53 Great Jones St., ilbucovineria.com) is packed with salumi groupies hoping for a shot at the expert sausages, prosciuttos and more that are made in-house, a rarity in this health code-crazy city. In addition to the salumi, hearty Italian appetizers like fried artichokes and beautifully fresh pastas keep hopefuls waiting for hours for a shot at a table. Not so during the day. Waltz in at 1 p.m. and sit down immediately, then gloat the next time your friends complain that they couldn’t get a table. Bonus: The casual dining room doubles as a grocery during the day, a gimmick that means nothing but dead space at night, when the counters are closed, but which allows for fantastic people-watching during a solo lunch.
• Compare the lunch and dinner menus. Some places offer special dishes only during the day, giving weekday lunchers yet another perk to lord over their deskbound brethren. Case in point: Momofuku Ssam Bar (207 2nd Ave., momofuku.com), which at night serves an entire rotisseried peking-style duck as one of its group meals. Get three of your friends to plan far enough in advance and you just might be able to enjoy the sweet, sticky bird, stuffed with duck-and-pork sausage and served up with chive pancakes and lettuce for maximum messy enjoyment. Or, walk in any day of the week for an individually portioned plate with all the same fixins;  no advance planning required.
• Whatever you do, don’t get the prix fixe. The sit-down equivalent of the McDonald’s meal combo, lunchtime prix-fixe menus are designed to satisfy the most people with the least fuss. Otherwise talented, creative chefs throw a salad, sandwich, and a scoop of ice cream at diners and shoo them out the door, ruining any treat yo’self aura you may be trying to cultivate. Paradoxically, while Aldea (31 W. 17th St., aldearestaurant.com), the Michelin-starred modern Portuguese restaurant just off Union Square, recently announced it was going prix-fixe only at peak dinnertimes, it still offers an a la carte lineup at lunchtime alongside the set menu. The arroz de pato, rice with duck confit, is a signature not to be missed – and it’s not available on the prix-fixe.

In the bathroom at Aamanns-Copenhagen (13 Laight Street, aamanns-copenhagen.com), among a medley of framed photos of Danish scenes both archival and new, is a page cut from a magazine. On a stark white background is a glamour shot of a loaf of dark-crusted, chocolate-brown bread, a slice carved suggestively off to reveal the moist crumb within. Above it, the loaded question: “Is America Ready for Rye Bread?”

It’s easy to bristle at the Euro arrogance of the question, posed by a local magazine on the occasion of the opening of the first U.S. outpost of the Copenhagen café that is seeking to revive the ancient Danish art of smorrebrod, or open-faced sandwiches. True, for those with an insular New York image of the stuff, the malty, crumbly, nut-studded slices that are the foundation of Aamanns’s menu can be a startling departure. But remove the question of nomenclature and it’s undeniably delicious, transcending nationalism with one butter-slathered bite.

It can also be easy to bristle at the waitstaff’s practiced upsell for us clueless Americans, who may be confused by the presence of foreign-language words on a menu. They are quick to recommend the “Taste of Copenhagen,” a four-course sampler that carries the hapless eater along on a gentle wave of the restaurant’s greatest hits. It’s not, truth be told, a bad deal, and the items included are very good ones. But of the trio of herring, only the mildly mustardy, cream-sauce-topped and sweetly savory, tomato-based preparations are offered in the Taste, omitting the astonishingly delicious juniper- and allspiced-scented, lightly pickled version served in a mason jar with capers, fresh dill, and a wedge of soft-boiled egg. This is what Copenhagen tastes like, and it’s disingenuous (not to mention a disservice to the diner) to pretend otherwise.

By day, the interior seems stark at first glance. The echoingly tall chamber is lined with white tile, blond wood tables and gray Arne Jacobsen-esque chairs set generously apart from one another, with a bar against one wall backed by sky-high minimalist shelving artfully arranged with jars of mystery pickles and white ceramics. But even at noon, fully wintry sun blazing through the enormous, iron-laced windows, tables are topped with softly flickering tealights. Coffee comes in a handle-less mug meant for cupping in both hands, and each sandwich’s towering assemblage of beautifully composed elements is just a hair too high, leading to giggles and rounds of sandwich Jenga that leave no room for stiff pretence. The comfort offered here is a quiet kind, not the hit-you-over-the-head American sort that stands for butter and gingham aprons and a down-home twang. But it’s all the more potent for it.

At night, this quiet coziness becomes a full-scale den, as the sun lowers and the tealights become the primary illumination. It’s then that the bar shifts from showroom art installation to the heart of the place, pouring native beer (no, not Kronenbourg, the ubiquitous Bud Light analog of Denmark), cocktails, and an assortment of house-infused aquavits. Infused liquors so often are wan ghosts; with a good deal of squinting and not a little bit of psychosomatic imagining, the intended flavors reveal themselves oh-so-slightly, to disappear again under the waves of the base spirit. But here, the infusions are almost startlingly pronounced, an even bigger feat considering the infusee is aquavit, the caraway-scented Scandinavian grain alcohol designed to singlehandedly ward off the winter chill of the Arctic Circle.

From the choices that include earthy-sweet roasted pumpkin and blood-red beet, the parsley and rye bread are not to be missed. Parsley aquavit is grassy and clean, an emerald-green-tinted vegetal that feels as though it is upholding aquavit’s reputation as a digestive aid. The rye bread-infused option, on the other hand, is a deep caramel brown, malty, and not a little salty—a sip on its own may be too much, but wait until your food arrives before you send it back. Sipped alongside its mother loaf, whether under smorrebrod or crumbled over herring, it mellows to a perfect counterpart.
Yes, America is ready for Aamanns-Copenhagen’s rye bread. The real question is: Why were we made to wait so long?

Handicapping the competition for Brisket King of NYC

Brisket is big business these days. After years of struggling in the Passover ghetto, the notoriously fickle cut of beef is having a full- fledged moment in the sun, thanks in large part to the awareness campaign begun some six years ago by New York’s Texas BBQ pioneers, Hill Country Barbecue Market. Unlike most other smoky locales, which worship the almighty hog, Texas has always been cattle country and, as the old saying goes, smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em. That’s not to say brisket doesn’t exist in other traditions, but it’s always been the ugly-duckling cousin to specialties like Carolina whole hog or Kansas City ribs.

Not so in Texas. There it’s all beef and it’s all good, from the Flintstones opening credits-worthy heft of the ribs to the Central Texas snap and spice of sausage. But the real test of the pitmaster’s art is the brisket—done wrong it’s a tragic husk, a cat’s cradle of stringy, lifeless fibers bound by a salty rub (no sauce to save you here). To do it right takes dedication and skill, which may be why New York chefs are almost monomaniacally focused on it (just ask Brisket Town-née-Lab’s Daniel Delaney). Now lifers and dilettantes are chasing the deckle dragon, after the perfect balance of fatty excess and smoke-laced, lean meat.

At next week’s Brisket King of NYC showdown, the city’s boldest will square off against reigning champion John Brown Smokehouse for the crown and the glory. The meaty affair now in its third year (the second under such regal auspices) is organized by Food Karma Projects, which could lead a master class in hosting tasting events. They’ve crowned victors in everything from gumbo to cassoulet, invaded Governors Island with pigs and celebrated craft beers, always with enough food and drink to go around and a ticket-selling philosophy that understands giving attendees a little elbow room is worth more than selling out to capacity every time.

While the rules of competition do not specify the BBQ treatment, it’s a safe bet that at least 75 percent of the dishes on offer will have gone through the smoker in some capacity; the lineup includes all of the city’s BBQ brisket Brahmins. There for the fight will be the aforementioned Delaney; Smorgasburg darlings and now brick-and-mortar East Villagers Mighty Quinn’s; Harlem grandpappy Dinosaur BBQ; the brand-new Fletcher’s Brooklyn BBQ, run by a former pitmaster for heavy hitters Wildwood and R.U.B.; lone ranger Robbie Richter, the Hill Country O.G.; and the reigning champs John Brown, back to defend their honor.

They’ll be rounded out by a broad selection of wild-card restaurants, from the Mediterranean/Middle Eastern-inflected Taboonette to the Caribbean Mango Seed, the Creole Tchoup Shop, and the grilled cheese specialists Melt Shop. Most interestingly, also on the roster are farms being represented by hired-gun chefs, clearly angling more for name recognition than for a chance at the big crown.  Of these, the most curious is Møsefund Farm’s apocryphal Mangalitsa pork brisket, which, we’re predicting, will get tons of audience love but no official recognition, like the Olympic figure skaters who were back-flipping before judges would give them any points for it.

Competition will be tough, but ultimately the field will be easily divided into a lot of sliced BBQ briskets served slider-style with a slaw, some just-like-bubbe-used-to-make braised versions, some way-outta-left-field (last year saw a deep-fried, panko-breaded meatball) and a few creative smoked treatments. The judges’ top three will be diplomatically representative, but our money’s on John Brown for the crown, for the Kansas City-style competitor has a secret weapon none of the Texas guys can match: burnt ends. Traditionally, the rub-encrusted, fatty ends of each brisket are saved up over the course of the week, held in their juices like a proper braise, and offered as a blink-and-you’ll miss-it special at the best KC smokehouses. It’s the best of both worlds; truly a brisket fit for a king.

Brisket King of NYC will take place Wednesday, Feb. 20, from 7 to 9 p.m. (VIP hour with open bar from 6 to 7 p.m.) at Santos Party House, 96 Lafayette St. Tickets are $45 or $75; to purchase, visit BrisketKingNYC.com.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Valentine’s Day is a Hallmark sham, a manufactured non-holiday dreamed up in a craven bid to sell out-of-season roses in the middle of the long, dark winter. Singles hold this trope up like a string of garlic to ward off the vampiric specter of couples’ bliss, while longtime partners wearily use it to rationalize spending another night in sweatpants on the couch.

They’re right, to a point. There is nothing about Feb. 14 that demands plush hearts, teddy bears and cupids, boxes of chocolate and bouquets. But the original Saint Valentine made his name centuries ago when, right before his execution, he sent one final love note to his lady, signing it “From your Valentine.” Since then, the saint’s day has been a catalyst to fess up your true feelings, whether to a secret crush or the spouse you tell to empty the dishwasher more than you tell them how important they are. It’s a tradition that’s lasted more than 500 years—why mess up a good thing now?

Unfortunately, when it comes to dining on the day, too many restaurants fall back on the menu equivalent of the Russell Stover assortment: the caviar-steak-chocolate cake prix fixe. Rather than fall for this scourge of the Valentine-industrial complex, take a moment to consider the things that make your relationship unique, and do something meaningful to you. Go out for a meal that’s outside your usual routine, try a place you’ve been talking about for months, or stay in and cook something more complicated than pasta and jar sauce. Still not sure where to start? We’ve got you covered.

Was your first date a trip to the underground Flushing food court? Are you on a shared mission to try food from every country in the world? Head for Yunnan Kitchen (79 Clinton St., yunnankitchen.com), which specializes in the cuisine of this still relatively unfamiliar region of China in an atmosphere more conducive to hand-holding than most linoleum-lined Chinatown dens. Light, veg-focused fare that emphasizes unusual ingredients is the M.O. here—try the chrysanthemum salad.

Have kids? You’ve most likely been eating any meals out at ungodly early hours, in brightly lit barns that have room for tantrum throwing and crayon flinging (not that your kids do these things, of course). Do a 180 and have a Spanish night out at the tiny, dimly lit Txikito (240 Ninth Ave., txikitonyc.com). Arrive as late as you can stand to stay up—dinner in Spain doesn’t ever begin before 9 p.m.—and graze on the Basque specialty, pintxos, one- or two-bite toasts topped with everything from artichokes to foie gras.

Use V-Day as an excuse to restock your sugar high? Go for a three-course dessert meal at Chikalicious Dessert Bar (203 E. 10th St., chikalicious.com). Their seasonal approach to sweets means the menu is currently stocked with wintry options like hot caramel custard soup and butternut squash ice cream brûlée, all guaranteed to change the way you think about dessert (and keep you bouncing off the walls for hours).

Single? Take a page out of Amy Poehler’s Parks & Rec book and make it a gal-entine’s day (pal-entine’s day?). OK, you don’t have to go so far as embroidering faces on pillows, but there’s no reason not to take the day as an opportunity to appreciate whoever is special in your life, whether it’s your group of high-school besties or the people at work who listen sympathetically whenever Brenda in HR makes your life miserable. Crowd around a table at the wood-lined Rye House (11 W. 17th St., ryehousenyc.com), and raise a glass of the titular spirit (or bourbon, or scotch) from an extensive menu that’s helpfully organized by tasting notes. Bonus: This is probably the least crowded this cozy but decidedly un-romantic spot will ever get, so stretch out and enjoy the leg room.

No matter your circumstances, there’s a way to celebrate the holiday without inducing gags or yawns. This year, make sure old St. Valentine didn’t die in vain.

If you serve ramen in a restaurant with none of the traditional trappings, can it still be considered a proper ramen experience?

Zutto Japanese American Pub (77 Hudson St., zuttonyc.com) hopes so. No, not the Zutto you’re thinking of, though Tribeca stalwarts may be forgiven. For some 30 years or so, that name was the domain of the first and, for a long time, only sushi restaurant in what was still an amenity-free neighborhood.

While this erstwhile izakaya occupies the same address and bears the same name, it is very clearly Under New Management. In addition to a new real estate developer owner, the restaurant now has a kitchen run by a former wine director for Bouley and other fine dining landmarks in his first solo venture as chef. The resulting establishment shows some affinity with both sides of its heritage, though perhaps not enough in either direction to produce a coherent experience.
In addition to the all-important ramen (more on that in a moment), there is a variety of steamed buns (nikuman), blistered shishito peppers whose occasionally overwhelming bell pepperiness is tempered by a sharp hit of citrus, pork katsu cutlets and edamame, also charred to better effect than the usual boiled blandness. There is a sushi menu that does not completely eradicate Zutto’s baroque past, rather balancing the outlandish items like a foie gras roll and a short rib roll with a manageable list of pristine sushi and sashimi.

Then again, those nikuman are stuffed with, in addition to the standard braised pork belly, portobello mushroom and arugula or a miniature Kobe beef patty with oven-roasted tomatoes, a nightmare for both steamed bun aficionados and hamburger purists. There is a Thai green papaya salad on the menu for no discernible reason. And the large-format dishes number exactly two: a miso-glazed cod straight out of another Tribeca Japanese stalwart’s playbook and … steak frites?
Ultimately, the rest of the menu is window-dressing for what is the real star of Zutto’s universe: the ramen. The moment it arrives, any remaining doubts dissolve quietly in the steam rising from the bowl. Here, the kitchen joins its two worlds seamlessly. As any true ramen-ya knows, the soup is only as good as its broth, and the 48-hour-simmered tonkotsu broth is easily on par with the city’s widely acknowledged traditional best. The chicken-lightened shoyu base reads as pure chicken soup, in a way bubbies could only dream of replicating.

Flavor combinations burst the boundaries of the traditional in a way that feels revelatory, never forced. Wasabi oil on the wasabi shoyu ramen isn’t the full-frontal sinus attack it might be; the bite is barely present, allowing a floral grassiness to shine through instead. Briny clams in the kimchi ramen (not nearly as spicy as the caps-locked menu would have you believe) are an unexpected bright point in the deep, mildly funky soup. The only disappointment is in how sparingly toppings are handled, given how well they feature the kitchen’s trickier maneuvers—the few tiny clams in a recent bowl teased more than they satisfied.

Even for those who don’t remember the dark days of Tribeca, when Zutto was a beacon of civilization, this new incarnation has already become a go-to neighborhood stalwart. Even the menu’s more erratic moves allow it to appeal to a broader audience—cynical, perhaps, but if it keeps that ramen coming, nobody will take offense.

FireBird navigates the frozen tundra of the Theater District

“There is no such thing as Russian food,” says FireBird executive chef Paul Joseph. And while there are entire neighborhoods in Brooklyn that would take jingoistic offense at such a suggestion, over the course of a meal at FireBird (365 W. 46th St.; firebirdrestaurant.com), this starts to make a sort of existential sense. There is no Russian food; everything is Russian food. There is no Matrix; we are so deep within the Matrix we can no longer see it.

Or, more plainly, there is no Russian food in the same way there is no American food, and to write a menu of such would by necessity include dishes that are actually Southern and Midwestern, or of Italian or Hungarian origin. With a few exceptions, the foods we love are sloppily borrowed from other traditions, while the ones we can claim to have originated are fiercely regionalized (try putting a hot dog on that menu and just wait for the New Yorkers and the Chicagoans to start the next civil war).

But while our culinary history is one of the poor, the tired, the huddled masses bringing their mom’s recipes west to be misinterpreted for the next three or four generations, the Russians did this cultural appropriation dance with style. OK, style and a hearty dose of the old iron fist: When they weren’t copying the grand style of the French, the tsars were taking an interest in the cuisine of their neighbors by invading and forcing some poor serf to keep cooking it for them.

Style is where FireBird excels. If you’ve ever walked the side streets west of Times Square and lamented the number of beautiful old townhouses turned rather unceremoniously into restaurants, FireBird will set those doubts to rest permanently. With grand, curtained doorways and plush, padded banquettes providing an air of opulent coziness even when empty tables outnumber the occupied, there is no way the restaurant could exist anywhere else. It is a warren of these rooms, each encrusted with ancient daguerreotypes of men in fur coats, paintings of wintry street scenes, sepia-faded books and glass-enclosed suits of clothing, culminating in a parlor stuffed with settees situated around a fireplace under a grand crystal chandelier, marble busts looming.

The menu is similarly lavishly appointed, with less clear results. Succumbing to trend, every ingredient in every dish is listed along with its provenance, whether local from the Hudson Valley, as the wild boar, or Armenian, as the lamb. While it makes for interesting reading, it is only occasionally useful. Do we need to be told what a kulebiaka is (it’s a thrillingly Old World dish of puff pastry enclosing salmon, mushrooms and rice)? Absolutely. Do we gain anything from the knowledge that the chicken Kiev comes with a rocambole garlic sauce, which, it can only be presumed, was the demi-glace-ish pool in the bottom of the unwieldy bowl in which the cutlet is balanced? Not particularly.

The dishes that sing best are those left in their natural state. The menu begins with a page of caviars served with blini and “traditional accompaniments,” and if budget allows, they are a necessity, along with any selection from the two-page spread of the vodka list. There are a number of salads that illustrate the European fascination with mayonnaise; the best of these is the Olivier, which combines cubed carrots, cornichons, kielbasa and potatoes to bizarrely tasty effect. It’s served on top of a thin black bread toast and topped with a beautifully poached quail egg, and it tastes of hardship and luxury all at once, like it originated in an isolated palace on the frozen steppes.
While there may not be any such thing as Russian food, there is a Russian attitude: oversized, gilt-edged, slightly out of touch, proud. Too many restaurants in New York manage only to capture a few of these contradictory impulses; by these standards, FireBird is the most Russian restaurant in New York.