By Helaina Hovitz

Two of the Upper East Side’s most prominent chefs also happen to be among the most world renowned, and they were the MVPs the Goals for Life Gala, which took place on Wednesday, May 8th. Along with four other chefs, they took to the kitchen (and stage) at Gotham Hall (1356 Broadway and 36th Street) for an upscale fundraiser benefitting the Pelé Little Prince Research Institute in Brazil.
The Institute is backed by Brazil’s famed “King of Soccer,” Pelé himself, who devoted his life to philanthropy since retiring from the sport.

“Being a nonprofit in Brazil isn’t very common, and we were [initially] afraid because we didn’t have the resources to fund it,” said Jose Alvaro Carneiro C.E.O. of the children’s hospital. “Then Pelé approached us, and now we believe in the long run we will fundraise enough to pay the bills.”

Michael Troisgros, Daniel Humm, Pele, Alex Atala, Roberta Sudbrack, Daniel Boulud, Claude Troisgros. Photo by Karissa Van Tassel

The clear culinary star of the evening was Chef Daniel Boloud, who owns Upper East Side restaurants Daniel (60 East 65th Street) and Café Boloud (20 East 76th Street).

A course each was also prepared by Brazilian chef Alex Atala, Roberta Sudbrack, the first woman to be selected as head chef for a Brazilian President, and French Brazilian chefs and event founders Claude Troisgros and his son Thomas.

Before the meal was served, the chefs did a quick on-stage demonstration to show how the dish was made.

Dessert, made by Daniel Humm, owner of Eleven Park Madison (11 Madison Avenue), was based on a “New York pretzel” and featured peanut butter shortbread, peanut brittle, malted milk sorbet, malt sponge candy, malt yogurt, pretzel crisps, and peanut butter salted caramel.

“I think chefs in general are giving people,” he said. “We try to support a lot of different charities like Share Our Strength [a group that fights child hunger]. We also did work to raise money for upkeep of Madison Square Park,” he said.

At Eleven Park Madison, the menu changes every day, which is “hard to keep up with, but fun, too,” but there is one permanent staple on the three-time Michelin Star winning menu: the whole roasted duck.

Humm, who originally hales from Switzerland, won the 2013 James Beard Foundation’s “Outstanding Chef” award, and has also been awarded several other honorable titles.

At the gala, everyone seemed perfectly content to wait until the first dish came out at 8:45 p.m. (the dinner started a 7:30), Flowers Ceviche with Orange Blossom Vinaigrette smothered in pepper, but I didn’t have the time — or stomach — enough to wait for the other four courses to make their way around the room. Nearly passing out from hunger, I left the glamorous world of a ballroom decorated in purple orchids and black linens to grab a chicken cutlet sandwich.

At $2,500 a seat, the event raised $700,000 for the Pelé Institute, which is currently the largest center for complex pediatric illnesses in Brazil.

For this Mother’s Day, or even for that perfect spring Sunday afternoon, it’s the perfect time to celebrate with brunch. One of the best parts of brunch is that delicious Bloody Mary. But not all spicy tomato cocktails are created equal. Take mom or your loved ones out for brunch, (even a liquid brunch), to one of these downtown places, where Bloody Marys take on an unusual twist.

At Burger and Barrel, the gastropub at Houston Street and Mercer Street, for instance, take your pick from four Bloody Mary choices including the traditional recipe. But for those looking for something more adventurous, try the Bloody Maria, made with infused tequila. The Queen Mary is made with spicy tomato juice, cucumber, gin and garnished with dill and lemon.

But the real draw, according to General Manager Carmelo Pecoraro, is the BBQ Bacon Bloody Mary, made with homemade BBQ sauce, tomato juice and candied bacon. It won first place in the Tito’s Vodka best Bloody Mary competition.

“I feel like everyone likes a Bloody Mary made a certain way,” said Pecoraro. “There’s always a variation on it, and that was the whole idea, to create something new.”

More recommendations:
*Cole’s (Greenwich Ave and Main Street) — Get a drink and an appetizer all rolled into one with Cole’s “Kitchen Sink” Bloody Mary. Chef Daniel Eardley pickles the green beans for the cocktail, which are thrown into the in-house made Bloody Mary mix, along with caper berries, olives, celery and lemon.

*Sauce (Rivington and Allen Street) — You and your loved ones have a choice of three fresh Bloody Mary concoctions at this farm-to-table mom’s Italian kitchen-esque restaurant. Plus all moms eat for free on Mother’s Day at Sauce! Try the Bloody Mario (made with Grappa Zardetto di Prosecco), The Bloody Maria (made with Sauza tequila), and a traditional Bloody Mary made with Tito’s Vodka.

*Colicchio and Sons (10th Avenue Between West 15th and West 16th Streets) ­— The Bloody Verde – You heard that right. It’s green, not red. That’s because this Bloody Mary variation, at one of Tom Colicchio’s famous restaurants, is made with green tomatoes, jalapenos, chilis, cilantro and green Tabasco sauce.

By Helaina Hovitz

My dad always liked to feel special at a steakhouse. He had the (perhaps slightly unrealistic) expectation that everyone would begin to fuss as soon as we arrived, shouting, “Oh, my god, they’re here!”

To be fair, I think that anyone dropping over $100 on a meal wants to be treated like they’re important, and service is, after all, what you’re really paying for when all good steakhouses tend to bleed together. There are a million of them in the city, and a million upscale lunch places in the financial district. So why do I like this one? Because they’re doing something good, of course.

Through the end of next week, a special “Artist’s Series” wine will be offered to diners, with $25 of the $75 price going to Share Our Strength, an organization dedicated to feeding hungry children. The art on the bottles of 2009 Arrowood Cabernet Sauvignon is based on a painting called “Golden Moments” by North Carolina artist Sherry McAdams – the winner of a contest Capital Grille held to find the design for the bottles. The painting itself made a six-city tour, where diners at other Capital Grille locations had the opportunity to place bids on it. Last year, the painting auction and wine sales raised $22,000 for charity.

3 NYC Locations:
155 E 42nd Street – (212) 953-2000
120 W 51st Street – (212) 246-0154
120 Broadway – (212) 374-1811
Serving lunch and dinner.

Throughout the rest of the year, Capital Grille gives all of their leftover food to City Harvest every day, cooking it up, freezing it, and handing it over. Thanks to them, there are hungry homeless people eating $50 steaks all over town, which makes them a ten in my book. Here’s what else I loved.

As an ex-drinker, I appreciated the fact that the waitress brought over the bottle of Pellegrino like it was a fine merlot, cradling it in her arm and hugging it close to her body.

The décor created the feeling of a cozy, upstate getaway with its dark woods and colors, mood lighting, soft jazzy music playing, and a fire-burning tableside lamp (ok, it was a candle). Save for the creepy portraits of old people with weird eyes staring back at me as I ate my sirloin, it was rather romantic.

It’s a great date place for someone like me because they pre-sliced my steak, which spared me the humiliation of a potential deal-breaking mess (yep, it can get that bad). As an added bonus, they gave us black napkins for our black pants (white napkins leave lint on ‘em).

Most importantly, loudmouth brokers and banker bimbos aren’t spilling their drinks everywhere and shouting over each other — they’re all on Stone Street where they belong. The mixed drinks are the same price, anyway, so why not keep it classy? I would if I could partake in their homemade pineapple vodka.

Here’s what we ate: a coffee-rubbed steak (Bone-In Kona Crusted Dry Aged Sirloin with Shallot Butter), mozzarella wrapped in a gratuitous amount of prosciutto, a steak topped with jumbo lump crabmeat (Filet Oscar) that my date proclaimed “was the best meal I’ve ever had in my life,” lobster mac and cheese, and a slice of chocolate hazelnut cake the size of a football (yes, we forced ourselves).

If I were big on fish, I would’ve ordered their Chilean Seabass, which, like all of their fish, is sustainably caught. Their beef is sustainable, too.

On the way out, I was told that a special committee meets every few months to talk about recycling, environmental safety, and new ways for the restaurant to go green.

I’d say that the Capital Grille’s do-good efforts are yielding a rather juicy payoff, and I was left with the image of a cow and a bull happily mating in a field somewhere, sustainably.

By Elian Zach

ust when I was about to formally change New York’s title from “The City That Never Sleeps” to “Sleepytown,” I found hope in the form of a delicious cardiac arrest.
At 2:30 a.m. on a Thursday night, I was walking with my man around the cold streets of SoHo, looking for a place to eat. Our three-hour long disco nap, from which we woke at 11 p.m., left us both wired and starving, and after two shots of overpriced tequila at a club full of douchebags, all we wanted was to have an amazing meal and gaze into each other’s candlelit eyes. Not too much to ask for in the greatest city in the world, right?
Wrong.
Apparently, “open late” is an incredibly subjective term. We were turned away from four different self-proclaimed “open late” joints, and my sexy strut was becoming increasingly painful to watch, as my cheap, yet beautiful, high-heeled booties started to betray me.
My man, a resourceful and devoted foodie and chef, knew all too well that our night couldn’t possibly end with a grilled cheese and a side of misery at some dingy diner. He was so eager to fulfill my insatiable craving for something of the “best I’ve ever had” variety, that I couldn’t decide whether his determination was more adorable or exhausting. I was about to accept my cereal in almond milk fate, when he suddenly gave me a knowing smile, squeezed my hand lightly, and said, “Oh, I know. I know.”
We walked a few blocks over to Sullivan between Spring and Prince, and entered Blue Ribbon Brasserie. I hadn’t been there in years and forgot it even existed. We ordered a bunch of delicious dishes from their classic and extensive menu, which they serve in full until 4 a.m. seven nights a week. After scarfing down grilled sardines with anchovy spread, steak tartare, matzo ball soup, and a great deal of bread and butter, we realized that one of the dishes had yet to arrive. When it finally did, we were far from hungry, which only proved how amazing it really was, because we finished the whole thing.

Blue RibbonBrasserie
97 Sullivan Street
Phone: (212) 274-0404
Hours: Every day between 4 p.m. – 4 a.m.
Reservations available for parites 5-8 people
www.blueribbonrestaurants.com/rests_brass_man_main.htm

Beef Marrow & Oxtail Marmalade
Where do I begin? The marrow was smooth and buttery, and each bone had a generous amount of it hidden inside. The braised oxtail marmalade was subtly sweet and had the caressing texture that only a good long braising process can accomplish. The fried parsley garnish added a fresh and crispy twist, while the sel-gris (grey salt) brought it home, uniting the different elements on a beautifully toasted brioche, crunchy and slightly burnt on the outside and soft and spongy on the inside. In short, a delicate collage of flavors that equaled a truly perfect bite.
Price: $16.75

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.

When the Tokyo chain sometimes called the Denny’s of Japan for its sheer ubiquity (somewhat unfairly, as what, then, are we supposed to call the many Dennyses—yes, the Denny’s—that also thrive there?) announced it was opening its first U.S. branch on a side street off Union Square, a cheer went up from the city’s ex-pat and wannabe communities. Offering a type of quick-service comfort food not readily available in a city now teeming with sushi palaces, izakayas, soba-yas and enough ramen to ensnarl all of the MTA, Ootoya (8 W. 18th St., ootoya.us)  both eases the patriot’s dreams of home and checks another box on the foodie’s To Eat list. But even for those who don’t have a burning desire to eat natto or dream of a curry don the way mom used to make, the restaurant has much to offer.

The gimmick here is that every entree is available as the centerpiece of a set meal called teishoku. Delivered all at once to maximize the busy office worker’s precious time, the meal covers a lacquer tray with a swath of seemingly interlocking receptacles. Lift the rounded lid on a black bowl to reveal miso soup, steam curling gently upward. Arrayed on a chunky white saucer is a rainbow of nukazuke pickles, which are fermented in rice bran rather than the usual brine. And what’s in that delicate ceramic basket, a miniature replica of a 19th-century snake charmer’s? Surprise! It’s chawanmushi, a delicate, savory egg custard.

While it’s perfectly reasonable to assemble a meal from the menu’s assortment of small dishes, sushi, grilled skewers and entrees, the teishoku set provides the most instant gratification, as well as an insurance policy against more adventurous orders. Never had tororo, mountain yam that’s been grated and whipped to a slippery frenzy, a common Japanese topping for soba and more? Order the hanabi don anyway, a rice bowl that comes loaded with slices of sashimi, soy beans, okra, a soft-cooked egg and a cloud of the snow-white tuber, safe in the knowledge that you’ve got basically a second meal waiting in the wings if it’s not to your taste. (But if textural contrasts excite you, it almost certainly will be. Give the whole thing a good stir to get warm rice, cool fish, crunchy veg and silky egg yolk all in one bite.)

For those ready to move forward sans safety net, the small dishes that make up the first half of the overwhelmingly long menu yield unusually big returns. A concise list of yakitori contains the ever-elusive tail, a tantalizing morsel of crunchy skin and fat, as well as tsukune, a chicken meatball served with a small bowl containing a single egg yolk for dipping. It’s one of the best renditions in the city, better than some dedicated houses can dream of.

That grill also transforms non-skewered meats, including a tender beef tongue, a number of mackerel never given their due in American cooking and pork belly. Ignore the candyland warning signals set off by a cinnamon-marinated version; the only sweetness comes from the fatty meat itself, the spice a surprisingly perfect savory fit. And then there’s the fryer, which turns out a perfectly bronzed breaded pork cutlet, presented atop the traditional wire grate to keep the underside from sogging up against the plate. It’s the perfect design solution to a problem you didn’t know you had.

The Denny’s moniker is not only unfair to Japan’s Denny’s outlets, it vastly maligns the experience at Ootoya. The interior is coolly wood-lined, with an elegant bar up front and a more convivial, wider bar in the main dining room behind which the merrily industrial kitchen can be glimpsed. Cold sake comes in glass decanters balanced in a bowl of ice, a single chrysanthemum placed daintily alongside. Modernist steel latticework stands in for shoji screens, separating tables and covering the soaring vent above the yakitori grill. You’ve never had a Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘n’ Fruity in a place like this.

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?