Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Clubhouse Cafe

January 29

Last night, before having dinner at Monkey Bar, I went to a party at Clubhouse Cafe, which until quite recently was Tintol, a tapas bar specializing in Portuguese wine and food. Now it’s a kosher bar and lounge. Owner Jose de Meirelles also owns Le Marais, a kosher steakhouse across the street, and he saw a demand for a more casual place for people who follow Jewish dietary laws, both for spillover from his steakhouse and, well, just because.
It was a good party. I met Beth Aretsky, who is perhaps best known a “The Grill Bitch” in Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. It made sense that she was there, as Jose used to be partners with Philippe Lajaunie in Les Halles, where Bourdain was chef.
Since the restaurant is kosher, Andrea Strong brought her kosher-keeping mother from Queens to be her guest. That was nice, and I would have chatted more with them but I ended up mostly talking with Jamie Tiampo, who came with the ubiquitous Akiko Katayama.
Jamie's a Sino-Canadian food photographer, food enthusiast, and partner in Dell'Anima. We spoke of many things, including his background (his grandfather left China’s Fujian province at the age of 6 and was raised in the Philippines, one thing led to another and Jamie was born in Calgary and raised in Vancouver, had a career in technology, decided he wanted a career in food and moved to New York). He gave my colleague Sonya Moore pointers on photographing liquids (in brief: It’s very hard to do).
I had a glass of red wine, and then went to dinner.

Chinese Monkey Bar

January 29

I didn’t know how Chinese Monkey Bar had become.
My friend Andy Battaglia and I were actually supposed to check out a relatively new restaurant last night, but it turns out the chef there was out of town, so we changed plans to see what Chris Cheung was up to. Chris replaced Patricia Yeo, who had been hired by the Glaziers, who own Monkey Bar, to revamp the menu of this formerly old school Midtown bar and restaurant.
Andy admired the restaurant’s walls, which had been painted red with Chinese-style scenes, many involving monkeys, as is appropriate for Monkey Bar, while I assessed the menu.
Everything is served family-style, and although probably only the potstickers were actually Chinese, Chris' style of using Chinese ingredients and techniques, plus some Southeast Asian ones, in Western-looking preparations was more evident than I'd expected. And the food was some of the spiciest I’ve had in Midtown. Who knew?
Here’s what we ate:

Kaffir lime leaf curried chicken salad
Salad of baby vegetables with chile lime dressing
mini short rib spring rolls with truffled Sriracha sauce
classic Cantonese shrimp and pork potstickers
crispy duck breast, lychee, mandarin oranges and Sriracha hoisin
wok seared sirloin steak, chile, garlic and creamed chrysanthemum spinach