NYC Thanksgiving

Upon a recent trip to the Dutch outpost in the New World/food mecca, New Amsterdam, which people in certain circles have now presumptuously begun calling New York City, I and my wife-to-be, Misty, found several ways to fill our now-sated bellies. Though we were in the city to visit BeefRobot's vegetarian contributor, Libby, we took this meal with a high school friend of Misty's and his wife.

I will stick to a report of the finest meal, which took place at a tiny spot in the East Village, Graffiti. Operated by Jehangir Mehta, this place satisfies your food needs like few others. All the plates are small, and come out in succession, making for the perfect family style meal. Also, every bottle of wine is $25 - an excellent concept at worst. You can venture into the $35 all you can drink plan, should you choose that particular course for your evening, though we decided against this, as one of our number was preggos. For the record, el prego was/is not Misty, as far as we know.

The menu is divided by item price, which is pure genius. We started with the green mango paneer, and found ourselves enmeshed in a yummy deluge of pure goodness soon thereafter. This paneer actually had its own independent flavor: sweet, salty, milky; paired with the green mango lovin and placed atop a small piece of naan, it is truly transcendant. We then had the three cheeses plate, which starred two more-solid white cheeses and one more-soft white cheese. Memory fails, but they were all very good and were a nice second part to the meal.

Third up were the scallops, sliced thin and topped with pickled ginger and candied red chili. These were showstoppers, no doubt, and nothing I can add will further explain to you the delight the scallops caused in us. The fourth plate was a noodle roll with seaweed salad in the bottom and topped off with duck breast. This was my favorite of the night. Ridiculously good.

We followed that up with the Graffiti burger, fingerling potatoes, and chipotle mayonnaise. This was 2 mini burgers that we cut in half. The burger was deliciously juicy and starred some rockin sauteed onions on top. Next up was pork bun with apricot chutney. Uh, hell yes! This pork bun beat out the lunch pork bun we had at DimSum in Chinatown, hands down. The fluffy, pancakey bun kicked the hell out of the DimSum sweet roll version. Oh, and the meat inside was gloriously juicy, topped in some sort-of-barbecue goodness. I feel like we ate another item, but am drawing a blank; rest assured, it was awesome.

We started finishing up the meal, at the suggestion of Mr. Mehta, who was also our waiter (awesome!), with a prosecco lychee martini. Ohdeargod, this thing is ridiculous. They took lychee slushee (or whatever the proper culinary term for that is) and added prosecco. I think I just found meaning in life!!! This was a handsdown success, and even preggo had to try it!

Our dessert-dessert was a three sorbet delight: salty guava, grapefruit, and blood orange. Salty guava is delicious, especially followed up by the slow tension of the acidic-yet-sweet-undertoned g-fruit, and resolved with the front-of-the-tongue-titillating, sweet blood orange. We also had a fruit crumble of unremembered variety with ice cream, and it was good, just not stellar like everything else.

The price is your normal fine dining, $50 a person, which, considering our location, was damn good. The place is tiny, and I highly recommend reservations. They have a couple of stool spots for 2, which I understand come in very handy for the odd single diner. The kitchen is unbelievably tiny for the quality of food they put out here. Seriously, there are 2 industrial hot plates and 1, maybe 2 people cooking. You can barely scoot behind them to get to the bathroom and, once in there, have very little change of actually doing the required 180 to sit. In any event, the place succeeds completely, with expansive use of the basement via the front steps (which are outside). The constant opening of the door might be my only complaint, but it is mightily overshadowed by Mehta's and his chef's service, attention to detail (almost without a thought, but after asking our permission, they converted every dish to a 4 person dish), and overall tastiness of their food. Get a reservation now!!