BlackBook Magazine

Sam Mason and his confectionary looking glass.

By Katherine Faw Morris

Tailor, the solo debut of pastry pinup Sam Mason, is a curious place. A vaudevillian wonderland where I more than half-expected to find young men with marceled hair lounging about on divans, discussing their collections of pinned butterflies and sloshing tumblers of gin. There’s mix ’n’ match wallpaper, creaky wide-plank wood floors, pheasant statuettes, and the lingering stench of child labor left over from when the place housed the American Nut & Screw factory. It all screams turn-of-the-century dandy, but then there’s that smoked pineapple foam. That chocolate soil. That fluffy egg white capping off a peculiarly purple gin fizz—all of it leaving me with the distinct feeling that I’m not in 1907 anymore.

Lower East Siders, you can go home again.

By Ethan Wolff

Okay, obviously the L.E.S. jumped the shark long ago. But two kebab dudes on Rivington? I have to pass through a street-meat miasma just to get to my door? And these guys are bookending Thor. You’d think one of the black-clad fauxhawked doormen there would be running them off the sidewalk. Can souvenir t-shirt and balloon venders be far behind? Sigh. I miss the old, half-abandoned, pre-Li-Lo L.E.S. Which is maybe why stumbling into Café Katja felt so much like coming home.

Katja is the anti-Thor. They’re serving Austrian food, but taking the homey angle. Co-owner Erwin Schrottner comes from an Austrian farm and that goes a long way toward explaining the vibe. The place borrows its name from one of his daughters. The materials inside are clean: exposed brick and glass fixtures, maroon banquettes, a bouquet of sunflowers. Despite the full liquor license, a low-key familiarity justifies the café in the name.

Because it feels so good to be bad.

By Katherine Faw Morris

I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t taste good fried. Doughnuts? Duh. Snickers bars? Scrumptious. Beef Beignet? Bring it on. Everything can benefit from a skinny dip in popping peanut oil. A fact not lost on BarFry, a new West Village emporium centered around the belly bombing art of tempura. That most non-kimono, anti-geisha, un-origami of Japanese imports. Abandoning my cherry blossom hairpiece, I came prepared to tackle BarFry with a sumo wrestler’s stomach of steel, determined not to be bucked by this wild ride of fried.

Vampy Chinese in Gramercy Park Hotel doesn’t bring the bling.

By Katherine Faw Morris

I thought Wakiya would test my sense of the ridiculous. All the elements were in place: House restaurant for Ian Schrager’s extreme makeover of the Gramercy Park Hotel from musty love in the afternoon-er to overstimulated, members only urban dream. Luxe Chinese fare prepared by a Japanese chef and overseen by the management posse from sushi heaven Nobu. Drunken anorexic 15-year-old Belarusians. It should have been train-wreck spectacular. It should have been Bianca Jagger on a white horse and coke spoons in every bathroom. But it wasn’t. It was Russell Simmons. In a sweater vest.

I saw Russell just as he was leaving, and I was being seated at Wakiya, in a stiff straight back chair upholstered in black damask. He was my only celebutard sighting of the night. I wasn’t even surrounded anonymous hordes of vertebrae-baring preteens of vaguely Slavic, Brazilian, and/or alien descent, but by, like, normals. My deflated expectations were somewhat lifted, though, when I took in Wakiya’s décor. The place looked like a straight-up vampire boudoir. Everything red and black and severe. The tables were arranged on either side of a long corridor laid with a scarlet runner and shielded by curtains of silky tassel. Twisty candelabra, tapestries, and matte black porcelain place settings emblazoned with tiny phoenixes. It was way Blade.

A night in Tunisia on the L.E.S.

By Ethan Wolff

My buddy J. has been a bad-luck charm for restaurants. Lately I’ve taken him out for E.Vill sushi, W.Vill Italian, and Harlem Latino, and all of them have been dogs. Last week I met him on the L.E.S. He had a sixer of Brooklyn and a newly purchased Statue of Liberty bottle opener. Maybe the latter turned our luck. In any case, BYOB plus Elyssa Dido equaled a great night out.

Getting schooled on the art of whole-fish cooking.

By Katherine Faw Morris

Last weekend I decided to cook a whole bluefish. After scraping weirdness out of its belly, cramming it bent in half into the oven with a few garlic cloves, and waiting for-ever, what emerged was something that tasted pretty much like, well, chicken. That’s when it occurred to me, it’s kind of a challenge to make a tasty piscine. It ain’t exactly bacon—just throw it on the skillet and yum. There’s a real art behind a simple, lightly seasoned whole fish. Luckily, Sea Salt has recently arrived on the lower Second Ave. resto scene to learn me a few things.

Theme-restaurant anxiety aside, we're feeling all warm and sunny.

By Ethan Wolff

Theme restaurant. I cringe just thinking about it. If you can’t plate grub without hiding behind floating Martian heads and autographed guitars, maybe you should just stick to operating gift shops. This was the anxiety I carried to Park Avenue Summer, which come September will be known as Park Avenue Autumn. Yes, the Quality Meats peeps who have revamped the Park Avenue Café space have taken on the Sisyphean task of reinventing and re-launching a restaurant every three months, with a hardcore adherence to the season in play. New menus. New napkins. New matchboxes. New wall panels. Servers trading in their summery lemon-yellow shirts and white jeans for earthier tones. Banquette cushions flipping over from their current buttery colors to their auburn backsides. And before you know it, Park Avenue Winter is here.