Sripraphai 64-13 39th Ave. near 64 St., Queens, NY (718-899-9599)
7. Lobster Bolognese at Telepan
Telepan is a restaurant I’ve always enjoyed; the food is consistently delicious, made from superior local ingredients, and the fact that it’s on the Upper West Side is a plus in my book. I like to know that good things can happen in such culinarily benighted places.
For all its buttoned-upness—its location on a block of stately brownstones, servers neatly dressed in grays and blacks—the food is pretty fun. It’s playful with canonical dishes. The lobster Bolognese is the pinnacle of these homages, although it doesn’t have terribly much to do with a real Bolognese. Traditionally, ragù Bolognese is a sauce of minced beef and pancetta, a few tomatoes and aromatics, and wine, cooked long—I mean long—and slow. The idea is that as it cooks, the proteins eventually break down into amino acids, which create depth of flavor and a long, lingering finish.
Telepan’s lobster Bolognese tastes gently and quickly cooked, and the flavor of the sauce is bright and fresh, rather than deep and contemplative. So maybe one could take issue with the name. But whatever—the thing tastes great. The delicate, licorice-y herbs tarragon and chervil carry the aroma, while sweet and acidic tomatoes spark up your mouth. You start chewing the pasta and find bits of beautifully cooked lobster giving it some extra bounce and adding a briny, buttery flavor. I’m a purist when it comes to lobster. Give me one boiled, and stand back. But this is the most fun I’ve ever had with lobster that didn’t involve a raincoat.
Telepan 72 West 69 St. between Columbus Ave. and Central Park West, New York, NY (212-580-4300)
8. Ginger Scallion Lo Mein with Roast Duck and Roast Pork at Yee Li
The dish is ridiculously simple. You take thin egg noodles and toss them with a little oil to lubricate them, a touch of oyster sauce to flavor them. Then you plop thin shreds of ginger and scallion on top. Done.
So why, if it’s so simple to make, am I highlighting this as a something to go out for? Because, while lo mein noodles are tasty enough to eat as a po’-broke-n’-lonely meal, they’re much better when used as a base for a variety of roasted meats, and there are no better meat roasters in Chinatown than my friends at Yee Li. I’ve been following these dudes around literally since I was a kid, when they were at Big Wong, and then when they moved to the hilariously named New Big Wang, and now at Yee Li. Like dozens of other places in the neighborhood, the day’s meat selections hang from metal rods in big windows, dripping with juice and fat, the sugars in their glazes suspending sticky drops in midair, unready to let go of the meat from whence they came. The char siu roast pork is a Chinatown classic—sweet, salty, and pleasantly chewy. But it’s the roast duck that makes me happy to be alive. The skin is rich and salty, the meat earthy, smooth, and complexly fragrant with five-spice powder. Once, when meeting a woman I would later fall in love with, she asked me what I would have if I could only have one more piece of meat in this life. This was it.
Yee Li 1 Elizabeth St. at Bayard Street, New York, NY (212-219-3686)
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