Podcasts

Woman Around Town’s Editor Charlene Giannetti and writers for the website talk with the women and men making news in New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities around the world. Thanks to Ian Herman for his wonderful piano introduction.

Top Chef

Mexikosher Takes Manhattan

08/16/2016

Chef Katsuji Tanabe is a character, and the food he’s serving up at his new location in New York is every bit as bright, colorful and authentic as he is. The much-beloved Top Chef alum worked in a number of top kitchens in and around Los Angeles before he opened his Pico-Robertson taco shop. After five years and a series of Midtown pop-ups over the last couple of years, Mexikosher has found a new home on 83rd Street.

The Menu

The Menu

Though he doesn’t come from a kosher background — his father is Japanese and his mother Mexican — Katsuji grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Mexico City. After he had become a cook he found himself drawn to kosher cooking and embraced by the kosher community. I guess it’s true for everyone that the way to the heart is through the stomach.

The open-face burrito, unwrapped for your visual pleasure

The open-face burrito, unwrapped for your visual pleasure

Everything you find in Mexikosher is made in-house, from the beef and duck confit carnitas cooked to tender perfection over 18 hours to the perfectly seasoned carne asada and grilled chicken to each of the many toppings and sauces. Choose from a selection of pickled vegetables, including red and gold beets, radishes, onions, and jalapeños; nopales (cactus leaves); pico de gallo and more.

A range of simple, fresh, delicious toppings

A range of simple, fresh, delicious toppings

Homemade salsas include spicy peanut, sweet smoked chipotle, mango habañero, creamy bacon, roasted tomato, Serrano aioli and tomatillo, and all are available in large, easy-to-access squeeze bottles, so you’re sure to never run out.

A wings appetizer, sweet and spicy on the outside, juicy and tender on the inside

A wings appetizer, sweet and spicy on the outside, juicy and tender on the inside

The menu is small, but the flavors are phenomenal. The hot wings are a must if you enjoy both heat and sticky sweet sauce. They’re complex, with a hard fried dough layer that gives way to incredibly tender meat.

Burrito under construction

Burrito under construction

An order of tacos includes three well-stuffed, double-layered soft tortillas with a choice of toppings, but you can also get all of the same ingredients in burritos, salad bowls or topped nachos.

One order of carne asada tacos

One order of carne asada tacos

One addition to the New York menu is the Torta Ahogado, or “drowned sandwich.” A generous portion of 16-hour-braised birria with mixed chillies is stuffed into a classic sub roll, and then the whole thing is plunked into a vat of spicy red gravy and allowed to soak for a few moments. The torta then gets lifted (carefully) into a takeaway box and topped with another generous serving of pink pickled onions. This item is limited, so if you’re planning a trip you may want to get there early to snag one for yourself.

Saucy smothered torta ahogado

Saucy smothered torta ahogado

If Mexikosher New York works like its Los Angeles forbear, the chef and his crew will be free to create regular off-menu specials. Highlights from L.A. stops run the gamut from the normal — a variety of tasty and unique burgers — to the extraordinary, like one memorable visit for fried calf brain tacos.

Even if it sounds strange, the truth is you can trust Katsuji to serve only lovingly crafted, completely delicious food. His creativity and willingness to experiment has served him (and us) very well. His touch with ingredients borders on supernatural, and you can take this from a lifelong extreme onion hater who looks forward to the thought of her next pickled allum–spiked torta. And remember: They don’t serve hummus.

Mexikosher
100 W 83rd Street
New York, NY
212-580-6200

King Georges: A Classic Tale of the Lion in Winter – in a Kitchen

03/20/2016

I’m a cobbler.

This is the repeated assertion of Georges Perrier the legendary master French chef and owner of the (sadly) now closed Le Bec-Fin in Philadelphia. Written and directed by Erika Frankel (producer of such documentaries as The True Story of Troy and Frontrunners) this short and deceptively simple picture about the last days of the restaurant gives us a compelling look not only at the incredible stress levels of working in restaurants (believe me I’ve been there), but also raises poignant questions about the cost of art and the inevitability of change.

Georges was one of a generation of French chefs who came to the U.S. and revolutionized fine dining in the process. In its hey day, Le Bec-Fin was a veritable institution; it wasn’t just considered the best restaurant in Philadelphia but in the country. At an inaugural dinner for Philly’s premier dining society, Georges served a 13-course meal that ended with an apple whose core cleverly disguised a quail. But tastes change; the kind of extreme elegance and formality that was always part of the mystique of Le Bec-Fin (not to mention such traditional French cuisine) just isn’t what modern diners are looking for and it becomes clear that Georges days are numbered.

His personal level of investment and sacrifice in Le Bec-Fin is impossible to overstate. Georges is famous for his incredible (some would say insane) level of absolute perfectionism in the kitchen. At one point he has a psychotic break over the lack of any galettes suitable for service. Georges was well into his late sixties getting up at 3:30 in the morning to go to market and working until well after midnight. He can’t slow down for a minute or even delegate authority to anyone else not even his partner and protégé, Nicholas Elmi. (That’s the same Elmi who went on to win Top Chef and now has his own restaurant.) This sort of schedule wrecked hell with his personal life to the point where he seems to have no outside interests except for his bichon fries Isabella and the Philadelphia Eagles. And while he constantly complains of tiredness he h demonstrates an energy level that most twenty somethings would envy. What will Georges do now?!? The answers are surprising, poignant, and as classic as his cuisine.

Warning-watching this movie WILL make you hungry.  Very hungry.