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.

Byblos offers old-world Middle Eastern cuisine accompanied by live music most nights and a great lunch special each day from noon-3 p.m. It is open seven days a week for both lunch and dinner, a rare find in this mixed commercial and emerging residential neighborhood.

The service at Byblos is excellent; the wait staff and ownership are attentive and concerned that all diners have a first-class dining experience. They recently moved to the 80 Madison Ave. location (between 28th and 29th streets, next to the upscale Carlton Hotel). The owner and his wife (Saba and Sonia Kachouh) are at the restaurant most days, ensuring top-notch service and overseeing the live entertainment.

And then, of course, there’s the food—a wide variety of Middle Eastern dishes ranging from Lebanese staples like tabbouleh and hummus to more exotic fare like kafta khoush kash, a seasoned ground meat with parsley and onions and an added spicy sauce. There is a large range of salads and hot appetizers: Some of our favorites include the fattoush salad (Byblos special), a chopped Middle Eastern salad with toasted pita on top; the jawaneh, chicken wings sauteed with cilantro, garlic and lemon (a tangy and tasty mix); and falafel (small, round deep-fried patties made of chickpeas and coriander served with a tasty tahini sauce).

On the cold-appetizer menu are many delicious varieties of hummus (pine nuts, tahini and meat are a few of the optional ingredients), other favorites like batinjan makdous (pickled baby eggplant with walnuts and garlic), and one of their specialties: garlic labne with walnuts (thick creamy cheese with an added flare of garlic).

The meat staples at Byblos are grilled and made delicious by the Lebanese seasonings and the added rice and vegetables. Our favorites include the delicious grilled lamb chops and the mixed grill (one skewer each of shish kebab, shish taouk and kafta kebab). There are also great seafood dishes liked grilled striped bass and grilled tilapia (fresh fish filet dressed with lemon and garlic); my dining partner said the latter was very good, but I can’t personally attest to it due to my fish allergy.

The Byblos bakery is chock-full of great pastries and pies such as Byblos kallage (pita bread stuffed with goat’s milk cheese and grilled) and meat pies (dough filled with seasoned meat and pine nuts).
Byblos has a very affordable $16.50 lunch special each day, which includes a soup or salad, one entree and coffee or tea. The Byblos Deluxe Dinner is a smorgasbord of delectable appetizers, choice of an entree and coffee and dessert, all for $42.95 per person.

Byblos is a great find for all midtown diners searching for authentic Lebanese food and ambiance.
Byblos Restaurant, 80 Madison Ave. (between 28th and 29th streets), open daily for lunch and dinner, with brunch on Sundays. They also do corporate catering and private events. Call 212-687-0808 or visit www.byblosny.com.

Sometimes, this kindergarten-teacher approach to world geography can be enlightening. After all, how many people knew what a Sochi was before it was named the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics? I’m looking forward to seeing some good scenes of Bob Costas trying a local delicacy (probably not vodka, sadly, though it is Russia’s most notable foodstuff) and a few majestic snowy mountain ranges when those Games roll around.

However, when the event lands somewhere closer to home, either literally (Salt Lake City? We get it, they’re not all Mormons.) or culturally (Vancouver. It’s Seattle, but cleaner.), the coverage starts to seem almost parodic. This is what we’ve been treated to this past week in London.

Everybody in the English-speaking world knows Great Britain—heck, they colonized most of ’em to begin with. We don’t need the Sesame Street montages of Buckingham Palace guards with those furry hats and busy street scenes of a melting-pot culture almost as diverse as New York City’s. And we certainly don’t need to watch Mary Carillo try this crazy thing called fish and chips—it comes wrapped in a newspaper! Knock me over with a feather.

There is an enormous wealth of British culture that has been overshadowed in international popular culture by those furry hats and fried foods for decades. British food, particularly, has come out of the closet by leaps and bounds over the past 20 years, overcoming its reputation of being as bland and soggy as the weather to revel in local produce, farmhouse traditions and that melting-pot resource of international spices.

There’s so much of it, in fact, it’s found its way to New York. April Bloomfield has been a one-woman cheer team for British food here since her first restaurant, The Spotted Pig, opened in 2004 in the vein of the gastropubs that had revolutionized London. Now, her John Dory Oyster Bar (1196 Broadway, 212-792-9000, thejohndory.com) is a more accurate representation of the state of play across the pond these days. Impeccably fresh fish and shellfish is handled with a light touch and strong flavors—a salad of marinated sardines, cucumber, melon and cottage cheese is a beguilingly fascinating combination for its simplicity—and the nose-to-tail sensibility shines through when the occasional special whole roasted fish head is offered.

The menu also reclaims a few unglamorous old favorites from the Motherland as is now all the rage. On a menu that changes regularly, two constants are kedgeree, a colonial bastardization of the Indian khichri, a rice pilaf with smoked fish and mild yellow curry powder, and Eccles cake, a buttery pastry filled with currants served with a wedge of Stilton.

Uptown, the gastropub spirit has been re-reinvented at Jones Wood Foundry (401 E. 76th St., 212-249-2700, joneswoodfoundry.com) with menus not only for lunch and dinner but for toast as well, the in-between-meals (and between drinks) snack more filling and less dainty than tea-time. Scotch eggs are the world’s gift to the drinker, hardboiled eggs wrapped in sausage meat then fried, and the true patriot can get Marmite, the potent yeast spread whose savory depth and slightly molasses-like sweetness inspires spontaneous renditions of “Auld Lang Syne.”

The London Candy Company (1442 Lexington Ave., 212-427-2129, thelondoncandycompany.com) is working to redeem the much maligned British candy industry. Yes, their hard candies are straight out of a demented grandmother’s purse, in a number of flavors that verge on the savory (and not in the good, salted caramel way), but dime-store British chocolate is of an alarmingly better qualify than American, and comes in great varieties. Try a Yorkie (“Not for Girls,” as the wrapper rather alarmingly states) which comes in great big cubes stuffed with raisins and cookie crumbs or a Crunchie, filled with a solid bar of golden honeycomb that will slowly melt on the tongue—if you can wait that long.

So the next time the Olympics coverage cuts away from water polo to reveal that the British serve their beer at room temperature, turn off the TV and go try something new instead.

But why would you put a deli in Tribeca, around the corner from the perennially wait-listing Locanda Verde and surrounded by a thousand other dimly lit Downtown hotspots, and why would you give it a birch-lined, soaring dining room with atomic-era brass light fixtures and soft white walls?

In Kutsher’s eyes, it all comes together. He is the heir to the Kutsher’s Country Club throne, the stalwart upstate summer resort/sleep away camp that was a haven for tristate Jews and non-Jews alike from its opening in 1907 to its heyday in the ’40s and ’50s and its nostalgic, elderly slide through the ’80s. He is truly to the manor born, though it wasn’t always clear he would end up assuming his crown. “There was no future in the industry” when he entered the workforce, he said. “I never wanted to get into it.”

Instead, Kutsher followed the now well-known millennial path of law school, corporate work, downsizing, re-evaluation, cooking school. But while most paths to the Institute of Culinary Education end up with a small business owner slinging cupcakes in South Williamsburg, Kutsher veered to hospitality, his genetic destiny.

“Over the years, I’d met so many people who had been to Kutsher’s. I’ve always been interested in food and its ability to speak to people, and this seemed like a way to tap into peoples’ emotional consciousness in a personally rewarding way,” he said.

Much has been written about the restaurant’s smart, amusing food at this point. The New York Times‘ Pete Wells likened it to Springtime for Hitler, the shock hit play-within-a-play in The Producers, and New York Magazine‘s Adam Platt labeled his astonishingly positive review “Building a Better Gefilte Fish.” Everybody had written off Jewish cooking, it seemed, except Kutsher himself and the restaurant’s chef, Mark Spangenfeld, who “has a lot of New York Times stars under his belt but is a nice Jewish boy from Great Neck.”

“We wanted to redefine, elevate and advance the cuisine,” he explained. That mantra informs the now-elegant disks of chopped wild halibut topped with microgreens in the aforementioned gefilte fish. You’re not going to forget that the Passover staple is what you’re eating, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the jellied balls floating in cloudy jars that roll out every year. Latkes come topped with three kinds of caviar, including a brightly sharp wasabi tobiko and a boldly salty salmon roe.

“We wanted to have fun with it,” Kutsher said. “You know, to call yourself farm-to-table- what does that mean? You can basically do whatever you want and call it American. We’ve given ourselves a challenge, real limitations to work within.”

Intelligently sourced ingredients is one key to the food’s success; it’s hard to mistreat the grilled Romanian skirt steak the way others do when you’re using prime meat—something no other restaurateurs bother to do for the much maligned cut. Mushrooms aren’t just brown flecks in gravy when they’re assorted wild varieties; they’re sautéed gently and featured prominently in the kreplach.

It’s all a resounding success with customers young and old, Kutsher’s regulars and goyim who’ve never heard of the place—save for one small, vocal contingent. “There are some people who, once you start making something they or their relatives make, you piss them off,” he laughed. “They feel the need to come up and tell you theirs is better.”

Still, on a Saturday night the restaurant is packed with families, couples on dates and groups of friends drinking from the well-curated cocktail list rife with housemade syrups and infused liquors, glossed up with names like the Bungalow Bunny and The Deep End.

“It’s like a bar mitzvah on steroids,” Kutsher said.