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Tuna Tostare
At the newest location of Indaco, a four-unit concept by Indigo Road Hospitality Group, which opened in Atlanta last month along the Eastside Trail of the Atlanta BeltLine, sous chef Alex Fagan developed this dish for which Louisiana tuna from the Gulf of Mexico is sliced into small chunks and seasoned with lemon, shallot, cucumber, parsley, tarragon, “and some very high quality olive oil,” said Mark Bolchoz, culinary director for Indigo Road’s Italian concepts.
Separately he spreads spicy ’nduja sausage from King Salumi — a small producer in Asheville, N.C, — on house-made grilled sourdough focaccia.
“This spreadable Calabrese-style salami has the right amount of smokiness from paprika and intense heat that it plays beautifully with the cold crisp tuna crudo,” Bolchoz said.
The bread is then topped with the tuna mixture and garnished with microgreens.
“We think the warm and crispy bread with spicy ’nduja and cool tuna is an awesome bite and a beautiful not to the Italian coastline, where crudo and spicy salami are abundant.”
Price: $21
Fried pig ears with agrodolce
At Fossetta, which recently opened on New York City’s Lower East Side, chef Charlene Santiago salts whole pig ears and then confits them in pork fat for several hours.
“They are ready when you can give them a firm pinch and break through the skin and cartilage,” she said.
She lets the ears cool in the fat overnight and then cuts them in half-inch thick slices.
She makes an agrodolce sauce by slowly cooking red onion and Fresno chiles in oil until they’re soft and slightly caramelized. Then she adds red wine, red wine vinegar, and sugar to that and simmers and reduces it until it has a light syrupy consistency. Then she removes it from the heat, adds a few fresh bay leaves, lets them steep for around 30 minutes, and then strains it.
At service she deep-fries the pig ears until they’re crisp and then sprinkles them with sea salt and drizzles them with warm agrodolce. She serves them with Spanish onions that have been slowly cooked with Marsala wine and vinegar.
Santiago said that pig ears can by “scary” to some customers, “but once you have a bite, you realize that they are really quite approachable. They are a super-delicious, crunchy, chewy, salty snack.
Price: $17
Temple of Niha
At Pine Bistro, which Ayya Hospitality Group opened in Las Vegas’ Southern Highlands last month, the group’s lead bartender, Lewis Caputa, developed this cocktail, named for a temple site in Lebanon. He pours an ounce of Grey Goose L’Orange vodka in a tin with crushed ice along with ¾ ounce of Elite Arak, ½ ounce of lime juice, and ¼ ounce of orange flower water that has been cooked down to a syrup. That’s shaken fast and hard and poured, ice and all, into a wine glass. More ice is added and the drink is finished with Fever Tree soda water, and a mint sprig stuck through a cucumber slice.
Price: $15
Grilled octopus with almond purée
At Neeloo, which opened in the Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood of Williamsburg in September, sous chef Sean Moser developed this dish, for which Spanish octopus is poached in liquid seasoned with ginger and star anise. Then it is marinated overnight in a mixture of extra virgin olive oil, parsley, balsamic vinegar, tamari, lemon juice, and garlic.
Separately, he makes an almond purée by simmering the nuts in almond milk with thyme, rosemary and garlic and then adding Champagne vinegar and extra virgin olive oil and puréeing it all. The Octopus is grilled to order and served over the almond purée with confit tomatoes, chicory, and sliced almonds.
Price: $24
Warm freekeh salad
At the Washington, D.C., location of Ilili, a Lebanese restaurant that also has a restaurant in New York City, chef Satinder Vij combines warm boiled freekeh (a type of smoked wheat) with roasted honeynut squash, piquillo peppers, kale, and figs, and dresses them with a combination of pomegranate molasses, honey, lemon juice, sumac, crushed Aleppo pepper, za’atar, and salt emulsified with olive oil. He plates that mixture with pomegranate seeds and drizzles a little pomegranate molasses on top. He garnishes it with mint and parsley leaves.
Price: $18
