A Restaurant Critic Steps Up

Also a memorable meal in New York City. Great glasses! And a lovely old menu.

“Would love to know what Bryan Miller thinks of this!” Francis Lam texted me on Wednesday. He was referring, of course, to Pete Wells’ latest column. If you’re a reader of the New York Times you probably know that the stars returned this week after a Covid hiatus of more than two years. “I just remember,” Francis continued, “he got into such a huff when you gave Honmura-An three stars and now he’s lived to see a Bronx roast pork trailer get three stars.”

I’ve always been a fan of Pete Wells - he’s a wonderful writer and I trust his taste - but I thought this review of La Pirana Lechonera was an especially brilliant move. In one fell swoop he announced his intention to take restaurant reviews to a place that has never before been permitted at the Gray Lady. While I wrote articles about food trucks in the nineties, they were lagniappe, not the main course, and I was not allowed to assign them stars. Were the editors correct in thinking readers would have felt cheated if their weekly review did not concern a sit-down restaurant? I don’t know.

But times have changed. Pete writes about roast pork, pulpo and mofongo with passion, respect and knowledge; reading about Angel Jimenez’s food makes you very, very hungry. But Pete did more than simply review a weekend food trailer and pay his respects to a too-often overlooked cuisine: he also showed us why the New York Times will never give up the stars. Had he written the exact same piece without anointing La Pirana Lechonera with 3 stars it would have been memorable. But this was an earthquake. People will be talking about it for weeks.

Still, it made me think about the first time Chez Panisse was reviewed in Gourmet Magazine. It was 1975 and in response Darrell Corti, longtime friend of the restaurant, sent Alice Waters a funeral wreath. “Things will never be the same,” he told her.

I suspect that things will never be the same for Mr. Jimenez either.

I offer up this piece for two reasons. In the first place, Pete’s review of La Lechonera made me think about what it takes to be a restaurant critic. And it also made me consider the enormous effect Covid has had on restaurants across the country. In 1984, when I wrote this review, Alfred’s was already a very old-timer. The restaurant opened in 1928; sadly, at the age of 92, it succumbed to the pandemic in 2020. RIP.

”Where is everybody?” I asked when I walked into Sarashina Horii. The lovely restaurant was almost empty, and as I took in the serene rock garden and elegant furniture I began to worry that the food was going to be terrible.

Happily, I was wrong. I’ve just referenced the late lamented Honmura-An, one of my all-time favorite restaurants, and I am happy to tell you that this soba restaurant is a worthy successor.

Like Honmura-An, which closed in 2007, Sarashina Horii is the first foreign outpost of a venerable Tokyo soba-ya. (The original Sarashina Horii opened in 1796.) These soba experts make two kinds of soba; the pale white sarashina, for which the restaurant is known, is made from the core of the buckwheat which lends it a velvety elegance. The more robust mori soba, made from the entire grain, is darker and coarser. These people are soba masters, and the soba is superb.

But so are the other dishes I tried:

Assorted sashimi, beautifully presented.

Richly braised pork belly served with an egg dipping sauce.

Equally rich black cod.

Endearingly bitter green tea tiramisu.

Next week, from June 27-29, ninth generation soba master Yoshinori Horii will be in New York preparing a special menu. All I can say is I wish I could be there.

I’ll admit that I’m something of a glass freak. I like the way thin glass feels in my hand, and I’m always looking for small water glasses that fit easily into the dishwasher. I’m very fond of the rainbow cutting boards from Fredericks and Mae, and whenI saw these rainbow glasses on their website a few weeks ago, I had to have them. They have turned out to be everything I’d hoped for.

(Where did my love of glass came from? It was probably the summer of ‘72, when I was cooking at the Pilchuck Glass School started by Dale Chihuly just north of Seattle. Here’s a picture of me cooking dinner on molten glass the artists shoveled out of the kiln.)

Finally, because I’ve mentioned Darrell Corti, here’s the menu from the birthday party he and Steve Wallace threw to celebrate their combined 150 years.