Buvette (New York, NY)

A Corner of the Bar at Buvette

Buvette is such a creature of the West Village. It's small. It's delicious. It's expensive. And it's casual, but packs just enough attitude to remind you that you are in New York City's trendiest, chicest, most expensive neighborhood. I have sort of a love/hate relationship with it, as I do with all of the City, I suppose. I really dislike the sometimes impatient, disdainful wait staff, yet in equal measure love the homey, simple-ish, bistro-style fare and whimsical, tasteful decor. Since I am a glutton led by my stomach, I keep coming back.

At a recent meal, the tartinette pomodorini / small toasts with stracchino and cherry tomato included the pleasant surprise ingredients (not disclosed on the menu) of sundried tomatoes and capers, mixed in with sweet, roasted cherry tomatoes. The soft, oozy stracchino elevated the simple appetizer into surprisingly luscious and decadent. There was an excessive amount of olive oil drizzled over top, but if you tilted the toasts to let some of the excess effluvia run off, the tartinettes were a delight. I enjoyed the textural study of sundried tomatoes and roasted tomatoes, side by side.

Tartinette Pomodorini

Food Gallery 32: Noodle 32 (New York, NY)

Garnishes for Pho Bo

Pho with kimchi. It's not the most intuitive combination, but Noodle 32, a stall in the far back right corner of Food Gallery 32's first floor, manages to bring the two together on a single lunch tray in a functional working relationship.

Pho isn't something one would expect to see in a Korean food court, not only because this wonderful beef noodle soup isn't Korean (it's Vietnamese), but also because cilantro, an ingredient I consider key to pho's unparalleled deliciousness, is so hated by many Koreans. Can a people who seem to make a national pastime of cilantro bashing make good pho? Evidently yes.... but the cilantro does come on the side.

Whitehall Check-In (New York, NY)

The Whitehall Burger in all its Messy Glory

A few weeks ago, we discovered a surprising zinger in Whitehall, a British-themed gastropub that recently opened on Greenwich Avenue where the cloyingly pink, sugar-centric Sweetiepie once made a business of luring in five year old girls with susceptible grandmas. In addition to improving the decor drastically, Whitehall also improved the food. Drastically. The pressed duck terrine we tried our first visit had us so excited about the place, we returned the following week. Twice.

It turns out that we ordered some of the restaurant's strongest dishes our first visit, but subsequent visits have shown the kitchen to be competent, if not as earth shatteringly fabulous as we'd initially thought.

Kin Shop Check-In (New York, NY)

Braised Beef Rib Stew

It's been a few months since I last wrote about a meal at Kin Shop, Chef Harold Dieterle's "contemporary Thai" restaurant in the West Village, in part because the menu changes so little from visit to visit and we often gravitate towards the same dishes -- i.e. standards like the Massaman goat and duck breast with roti, which have been on the menu from the outset. But a little over a year after opening, the time is ripe for an update.

Kin Shop has weathered its first year in fair form, though Chef Dieterle's attentions seem to have turned elsewhere. (He and business partner Alicia Nosenzo have plans to open Marrow in Brooklyn, next year, and we haven't seen either at Kin Shop for some time.) We've found lunch to be hit or miss, but previously reported visits in October 2010, December 2010, and March 2011 don't make a secret of the fact that we still really enjoy this restaurant for dinner.