1 5
1 5
The Central Park Boathouse restaurant in New York City recently reopened with chef Adam Fiscus running the kitchen, and offering this dish.
He starts by tossing cherry tomatoes in olive oil, salt, pepper, and fresh thyme and dehydrating them for 14 hours, removing about 70% of their moisture.
Separately, he makes tomato sauce by sweating garlic in olive oil and then adds grated yellow onion, carrots, and celery, letting most of the liquid evaporate before adding basil, stems and all, and crushed peeled plum tomatoes. He simmers that for two hours, removes the basil, and seasons it with salt, pepper, and olive oil.
While that’s cooking he poaches lobster claws in salted water. He leaves the tail raw, chopping it into six pieces, and reserves the tomalley.
He sautés red Fresno and green serrano chiles with garlic in olive oil, and then adds the lobster tail to cook it and finishes it with the tomalley.
He puts the lobster claws and tail meat, dried tomatoes, and tomato sauce in a sauce pan along with lobster stock, heats it and then adds cooked house-made spaghetti, seasons it and plates it so the lobster claws are prominent, and garnishes it with a chiffonade of mint.
Price: $48
For this dish at Oak Steakhouse in Old Town Alexandria, Va., chef Josh Mitchell makes a traditional risotto using vegetable stock as the main liquid, finishing it with Parmesan cheese and basil butter.
Meanwhile, he seasons sea scallops and sears them on only one side in a cast iron skillet with a little canola oil, basting it with butter to finish cooking them.
While they’re resting, he heats up diced and roasted butternut squash, rutabaga, and grilled shishito peppers.
He plates the risotto, then add the vegetables, followed by the scallops. He garnishes the dish with sunchoke chips and micro basil.
Price: $43
At Only Love Strangers, a new bar on New York City’s Lower East Side, beverage director Fabrizio Arigolas developed this drink meant to evoke the spirit of acid jazz and “invigorate and refresh” those who drink it.
To prepare the ingredients for the cocktail, he infuses Ketel One vodka with lemon peels for 3-5 days, and also makes a “citrus mix” of equal parts lime juice, lemon juice, and water.
He muddles 15-20 basil leaves in a cocktail shaker with ½ ounce of simple syrup and a bar spoon of Sambuca Molinari until it has a “near-purée” consistency. Then he adds an ounce of the citrus mix and 2 ounces of the lemon-infused vodka, shakes it with ice and double trains it into a chilled Martini glass.
Arigolas said the anise flavor from the Sambuca presents a surprising twist to this relatively low-sugar drink.
Price: $19
Bea’s Bakery, a longstanding venue in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Tarzana, got new ownership in 2022 and those owners, Lenny Rosenberg and Adaeze Nwanonyiri, have been working on bringing multicultural influences to the place, which has been in operation since 1968.
That includes this traditional Jewish version of brioche that has the increasingly trendy purple Philippine yam ube in it.
They stir ube extract, along with sugar, oil, and eggs, to yeast, sugar and lukewarm water after the yeast finishes blooming, and they add ube powder to the flour and salt that they then add to the wet mixture.
Then they knead the dough, let it rise, braid it, proof it, brush it in an egg wash and bake it.
They said the ube doesn’t just give the bread an attractive color, but adds a sweet, earthy, and nutty flavor.
Price: $13.95 per loaf
Beggars Banquet is a restaurant that opened last year in New Orleans’ Lower Garden District. It’s named for the 1968 Rolling Stones album as well as the New Jersey soda-shop-turned-luncheonette that the Dilonno family owned for years.
At the new location, chef and owner Michael Dilonno uses a popular local fish, redfish, to make this dip. He seasons the fish with Creole spice and then smokes it at fairly cool temperature — 265 degrees Fahrenheit — for 45 minutes. Then he cools it, breaks it into small pieces, and adds it to a combination of softened cream cheese, cream that has been cooked down to reduce its volume by half, Blue Plate mayonnaise, and more Creole spice. He pulses it in a food processor and garnishes it with capers and rosemary flavored potato chips.
Price: $12
![](https://www.restaurant-hospitality.com/sites/restaurant-hospitality.com/files/styles/gal_landscape_main_2_standard/public/central-park-boathouse-spaghetti-with-lobster.jpeg?itok=PeGLbzrz)