Kurt's Flatiron Faves - Almond Restaurat and Bar

Last week, I took you through Mario Batali’s Eataly, exploring Italian cuisine through the market-style family of shops and mini-restaurants. It would hardly be fair for me to focus on a single country’s cuisine, and it just so happens that my next Flatiron Fave concentrates on classic French bistro fare.

Almond is located on East 22^nd, just east of Broadway. This was a place that I could always stop by for an easy (and delicious) bite after work while we were opening Beecher’s. Its creators, Eric Lemonides and Jason Weiner, somehow managed to combine the warmth of an old-style drawing room with the bustle and conviviality of a Parisian bistro. Add to that a really friendly staff, and the second incarnation (the first is out in Bridgehampton) of Almond makes out to be a surprisingly cozy neighborhood haunt.

Their menu adds to this casual sense of the refined. It’s comforting without being comfort food. It’s like going to your friend’s house instead of your grandmother’s house for dinner. They both cook really great food (at least, I hope your friend cooks great food!), but when you’re at your grandma’s you might act a little more polite and refined. That’s not to say you’re a boorish brute at your friend’s house, but you can enjoy great food and company there and still lean back a little and laugh a little more freely.

Next week, we’ll head south on Park Avenue and head back up 20^th half a block so I can show you Chef Sam Hazen’s Veritas, a stalwart of contemporary American cuisine. In the meantime, check back on Tuesday for my next recipe post – Cedar-grilled salmon with corn risotto and roasted lobster mushrooms!

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Kurt's Flatiron Faves - Eataly

You can almost see my next Flatiron Fave across 5th Avenue from Madison Square Park and Shake Shack. It's Mario Batali’s Eataly.

When you think of “superstore,” what comes to mind? Walmart? Target? Maybe even Costco or Sam’s Club? Well, Eataly is what I would consider a REAL superstore. It’s not a department store, but it’s like taking a walk through the entire culinary landscape of Italy, from meats to cheeses, from pastas to desserts. Like I said last week, I don’t think it’s inaccurate to call it the DisneyLand of Italian cuisine. I mean, take a look at this map! I half expect to see Land of Lasagne and Linguineland or something. At least a monorail or a gondola to get from one side to the other!

I haven’t spent as much time eating here as I have simply browsing and exploring. The breadth and depth of the offerings here almost lift it to the status of a museum, a comprehensive homage to all things food from Sicilia to Veneto and then some. I’m no expert in Italian cuisine (or geography, for that matter) and that makes Eataly almost that much more entertaining to meander through. The dining area seems like a mish-mash of various different concepts seated together or near each other. I think it’s what “food courts” were intended to be, before the term effectively became a four-letter word thanks to the popularity of shopping malls (and the cheap food associated with them) during the 50s and beyond.

In this case, Eataly is a space where different people can have different dining experiences while seated almost side by side in the same space. It feels like a sincerely modernized old-world market. This makes for some great people-watching while I browse the aisles and displays of seasonal and regional specialties (some of which I only recognize the way I remember characters from some high school reading assignments).

Next week we're going to make our way down back down to 22nd and just east off Broadway, where I'll show you the cozy, convivial, Parisian bistro-inspired Almond restaurant.

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Kurt's Flatiron Faves - Shake Shack

Last week, we came back down the revitalized Broadway to visit the Calexico Taco Cart in General Worth Park. This week, as the sun is setting, let’s head into the middle of the Madison Park, where there’s a bunch of tables and chairs that are illuminated by what seems like countless strings of suspended lights attached to a small-ish building. From that little shelter extends a line of people that sometimes gets so long that it stretches out to the edge of the park onto the sidewalk of Madison Avenue. The building is the first location of Danny Meyer’s Shake Shack.

A little history: Danny Meyer has opened a number of critically-acclaimed restaurants, all known for impeccable service, incomparable culture and innovative cuisine. These include Union Square Café, 11 Madison Park (just across the street from this Shake Shack), Gramercy Tavern (which we’ll visit later) and many others. If you’re counting, he’s gotten 24 James Beard Awards (kind of the Oscars of the restaurant industry) over the twenty-some years he’s been in the business. His approach to business is very people-focus and he attributes his restaurants’ success to making his staff the top priority.

Before Danny Meyer started opening restaurants there, the Flatiron/Gramercy neighborhood was known as unsavory and largely unsafe. Danny Meyer’s opinion was that bringing good business into the neighborhood would make it a better place to work and live, even when everyone thought it was a horrible idea. “A rising tide lifts all boats” was his philosophy in locating restaurants, with Shake Shack opening right in the center of the questionable Madison Park. What used to be a place many people wouldn’t dare to go soon became a place where all kinds of New Yorkers, families included, could come to enjoy quality, wholesome versions of American staples: burgers, hotdogs and shakes.

I wrote in my last post about how the city of New York focused on making public spaces more enjoyable, and I want to emphasize that Danny Meyer’s restaurants, like Calexico Cart from last week, serve as an example of how that type of transformation is never one-directional. Yes, there’s a top-down part that the city plays in developing spaces, investing in public works, etc. But more importantly, there’s the bottom-up, foundational effort from the local business owners and residents that is necessary to really make a difference. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that his ventures have been so successful while being so community minded, both externally and internally.

Next week we’ll cross the street from Madison Park to the brainchild of another culinary mogul, Mario Batali’s Eataly, which I like to refer to as the DisneyLand of Italian cooking. See you then!

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Kurt's Flatiron Faves - Intro

Wow. What an amazing month of July it's been!
Beecher's New York opened at 900 Broadway on June 24th and it has been CRAZY in the best possible way. I was really excited to see it open, but I could not have imagined how wonderfully welcoming and enthusiastic New York would be. I could hardly have asked for more.
As most of you know, I've been in New York for a while now and I've had plenty of time to explore the city, especially the Flatiron neighborhood surrounding BCNY (our short-hand for Beecher's Cheese New York).
I've had such a great time working and playing here, I thought I'd take a blog post (or several) highlighting my favorite nearby places, sort of our super-neighbors.
That's how I got the idea of doing a series on Kurt's Flatiron Faves.  Over the next couple months, I'll do a little post at the end of each week about one of these local spots. Expect a little history, a recommendation or two and some photos. As I go along, I'll build a map so you can see where all my favorites are in reference to Beecher's (which I'm sure will be everyone's starting point).

You can always come back to this post to see where we've been so far. Like an evolving table of contents!

1) The John Dory
2) No. 7 Sub
3) Calexico Cart
4) Shake Shack
5) Eataly
6) Almond
7) Veritas
8) Gramercy Tavern
9) Casa Mono
10) Union Square Greenmarket 11) ABC Kitchen with Jean-Georges	View Kurt's Flatiron Faves in a larger map