Beef Salad

by Celia Sin-Tien Cheng
November 20, 2006

SOBA NIPPON
19 W 52nd St
(5th & 6th Aves)
New York, NY 10019
212-489-2525

Wow! What a rough month it’s been. I’ve eaten 20 days without finding anything that really struck me as worth sharing, until now. Well, I take that back. While in San Francisco for a weekend, my dinner at The Slanted Door was amazing! It was my second visit to Charlie Fan’s famed Vietnamese restaurant in the Ferry Building, and like the first time, the overall experience was flawless! But I will reserve that topic for a future feature.

This month, having suffered through the most mediocre of mediocre meals, I’ve decided to just do one longer piece and briefly touch on the mostly unremarkable ones and then talk about how my palate and stomach were rejuvenated at Soba Nippon.

I tried the burgers at BLT Burger twice, hoping that the second time would give me the confirmation that I needed to deem it a good burger. And here’s what I can say: the quality of the meat is good — black Angus beef — and I like the Idaho hand cut French fries, but both times, by the end of the meal I just wasn’t jumping for joy. I’d still rather have the burger at Corner Bistro, Burger Joint or Tony’s, even if the quality of the meat at any of these three places is not comparable to BLT’s. And if I want a fancy burger, DuMont wins hands down. The burgers here are not big and the buns are kind of pathetic, compared to the buns at Royale (caveat being that I love sesame buns and BLT’s are plain). It’s not that the burgers are outrageously pricey, other than the $62 Japanese Kobe burger, which I would never get because ordering a burger made of 100% Japanese Kobe beef is a complete waste of that type of meat and downright stupid, but here you know you are paying for the BLT name more than anything else. Having said all those unkind words, I am still happy that this is my new neighborhood burger joint that delivers. In the depths of winter when I am hibernating and refuse to move, it’s not a bad option.

Moving on to European Union. I had heard good things about this nouveau bistro in Alphabet City when it opened without its liquor license. It took so long for them to get it that they had to close in between. Reopened a month ago with both food and alcohol, I thought it would be a good time to try it. Interestingly, a friend recently brought to my attention the chapter on food in David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day: Today’s Special. One paragraph in particular, strikes a cord with me after my experience at E.U.:

“As a rule, I’m no great fan of eating out in New York restaurants. It’s hard to love a place that’s outlawed smoking but finds it perfectly acceptable to serve raw fish in a bath of chocolate. There are no normal restaurants left, at least in our neighborhood. The diners have all been taken over by precious little bistros boasting a menu of indigenous American cuisine. They call these meals “traditional,” yet they’re rarely the American dishes I remember. The patty melt has been pushed aside in favor of the herb-encrusted medallions of baby artichoke hearts, which never leave me thinking, Oh, right, those! I wonder if they’re as good as the ones my mom use to make.”

The humor definitely lies in the way Sedaris phrases his opinion and experiences but I find some truth in what he says here. E.U. tries too hard… to overdress and overcompensate everything. The steak tartare with sea urchin sabayon would have been fine without the latter ingredient, and the butter clams have completely wasted the precious Iberico ham it’s mixed with. The watercress and beet salad with bottarga and goat cheese vinaigrette was again a dish with just too many ingredients that worked to flop rather than as a whole. The fish and chips were also just okay and left me thinking that I should pay a visit to A Salt & Battery. The one side dish that I did enjoy was the beer-glazed carrots, perhaps because that was one of the simpler dishes. But you see! Even the unpretentious carrots needed to be “beer-glazed!” E.U. is packed but the overall feeling I get from the experience is that it’s trendy and more of a place to be seen.

Okay, so after two high-profile restaurants, I decided to go grass roots and check out the long-standing Turkish restaurant, Taci’s Beyti, close to Coney Island. Now, everyone knows that I’m willing to travel for food, but I have to give my friend Adria kudos for driving out from Mamaroneck to Coney Island to try this restaurant. I also have to apologize profusely and make it up to her for asking her to come all the way for such a below average Turkish experience. In fact, I can’t think of a worse Turkish meal I’ve had in the City. Granted, my standards may be a little high after returning from Turkey, but even the last Turkish meal in the City at Taksim ranked higher than this one. The pan-fried calves liver cubes are much better at Turkish Kitchen, and the gyro platter with yogurt at Sip Sak far surpasses the one here. The meze were most unimpressive and the mixed grill again, just mediocre. The one thing that was very good was the lamb sautée — a casserole of small pieces of baby lamb filet mignon sautéed with tomatoes, onions, green peppers and herbs. The meat was so tender that we thought it had been slow cooked, but the waiter told us it took only a couple of minutes and the trick is marinating the filet mignon.

Finally, once I reconciled that I would have nothing to talk about this month I went to Soba Nippon to satiate an old craving.

It’s been nearly two years since I was last there. I knew that I was craving the beef salad but couldn’t quite remember what it was all about. I also recall that the beef soba salad is one of the most appropriate dishes to have during the hot summer months. Even so, on this cold fall evening, I stopped by Soba Nippon to jog my memory. I ordered the prix-fixe dinner so I could have a taste of everything. The key dishes being: agedashi mozzarella, beef salad, and the mori soba (plain cold soba with sprinkles of shredded seaweed).

The soba is handmade at Soba Nippon and the owner actually has a buckwheat farm in Canada, which is explained alongside a large photo of the flowering buckwheat plants on one wall inside the restaurant. I have never been a fan of the soba here. The texture is too hard and it’s cut too wide. Soba shouldn’t be too hard nor too soft (such is the case at Sobakoh) but just right. Therefore, despite the restaurant’s name, I would opt to forgo the soba for some of the other dishes.

One of my favorite things is the complimentary fried soba sticks they provide as snack before your meal — goes so well with beer. They serve it with a little dish of chili mayonnaise. Once I started eating the sticks dipped in the mayo, I couldn’t stop. I have a pretty high threshold for spicy foods but I found the mayonnaise to have a particularly strong kick — fabulous! When I asked the chef what was in the mayo, he just said “Chinese chili oil.” Okay! It works.

The agedashi mozzarella is one of Soba Nippon’s concoctions that is delicious. Since mozzarella is a relatively mild flavored cheese, substituting the cheese for tofu — the original dish that this is based on is agedashi tofu — actually works really well, especially because the cheese is slightly melted inside after being deep-fried. This is really something quite special and worth trying.

Oh, now the beef salad! It gives me great pleasure to talk about this dish. The salad is a regular iceberg lettuce, shredded red cabbage and carrot salad with a ponzu-based dressing. What’s remarkable are the thin slices of seared beef prime rib that sit on top of the salad. Dressed with sesame seeds, the beef is still slightly warm when served, and so tender that it almost melts in your mouth. While this isn’t Kobe beef, it is a similar type of pleasure you get. The cut of the meat is so luscious and juicy, laced with just the right amount of fat. I almost started to cry in ecstacy!

The beef salad is also made as a cold soba dish: beef soba salad. Even though I don’t love the soba here, when the cold soba is dressed with the perfect toppings in the beef salad, it complements the salad and creates a delicious soba dish. So for those days when you prefer to go low-carb, there’s the option of just the salad, but when you want a heftier meal, order the beef salad soba. You won’t regret it either way.

So ultimately, the month wasn’t so tragic after all. I have a short memory, especially when something good comes along to save the day… or month!

Also in Japanese, Meat, Midtown West, Noodles, Salad, Soba