Café Cortadito y Muy Rico
As regular readers of this blog know, I am not a big fan of going out to brunch. It costs too much; the lines are too long; and most of the food available could be made at home without much effort. But when you have to go to brunch, you have to go to brunch. When those times arise, I like to find places that defy my list of brunch negatives. One such place is Café Cortadito, a Cuban restaurant on the Lower East Side. I did a search for good downtown brunches, and the name came up. At $11.95 per person the price was right, at least relative to the rest of the overpriced New York brunches. So Empanada Boy and I arranged to meet our friends Baconhater and Halo-Halo there before they left the city to return to Cambridge.
Baconhater and Halo-Halo arrived before we did, and just to be sneaky, they sent me a text saying the lines were out the door. When we arrived at the pleasant, airy little cafe, they were seated at one of two populated tables drinking cafe con leche. We ordered some coffee, sangria and tropical fruit juice mimosas and got down to the business of ordering. While we waited for our food, the server brought excellent buttered toast triangles, which would later serve as the perfect egg-yolk mops.
Café Cortadito has about ten items on its brunch menu, all of which looked appealing in some way. EB ended up ordering Holguin: poached eggs over seared ham atop a croissant, finished with Creole sauce. This was the Cuban take on the breakfast sandwich, and it was a tasty take indeed. When punctured, the eggs ran over the whole thing and made it necessary to eat with a fork and knife. Halo-Halo ordered a delicious Cuban omelet made with potatoes and embedded with smoky, salty bits of chorizo. A piece of seared ham and two sausages balanced out the meat to potatoes ratio.
Baconhater got an exquisite dish called Camaguey. Made with fresh mango and papaya (both a little too green), plantain chips and grilled shrimp, the dish was colorful and light as a breath of tropical spring air. The shrimp was nicely cooked, but the downsides were the under-ripe fruit and the lack of sauce or cohesive seasoning over the dish. If even one of the fruits had been riper and more succulent, this dish would have been more successful. Camaguey had all the pieces, but didn’t live up to its potential.
My dish was Mazorca de Maiz Dulce Estilo Cortadito. A mouthful, both in name and in essence, it consisted of two fried eggs alongside sweet corn on the cob and a small green salad. The dish was simple and tasty, with corn that was actually sweet and perfectly fried eggs, but I would have appreciated a stronger sauce or some spices to jazz it up. The ingredients in my dish may have been a little too simple to justify the $11.95, no matter how cheap the restaurant was relative to its brunch neighbors. All in all, though, Café Cortadito fit my criteria for a worthy brunch place: The food was mostly flavorful and different from anything I would typically make at home. Which is not to say I couldn’t replicate these dishes— I’ll be working on my potato-chorizo omelet the next time I want something new to make for brunch at home.
Café Cortadito
210 E. 3rd St.
New York, NY 10009
212.614.3080
As we walked down East 6th Street to meet Vladimir Pudding for dinner, Empanada Boy and I passed restaurants named Taj, Raj and Taj Mahal. We were headed past them in search of our true destination: 
Yet, while these ubiquitous tikka masala-toting places have sprung up across the globe, I would prefer a ho-hum vindaloo to all the Big Macs in the world. The prices are also a bit higher than at the golden arches, more like $10 than 99 cents. The food at Raj Mahal wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible either. We started with beer— Kingfisher and Taj (not Raj) Mahal. We then had to switch tables after our eardrums were pierced by a shrill sound that it turned out was coming from the radiator. Seated at our new table, we decided to skip appetizers due to our current poverty (and much to the chagrin of our waiter) and went straight to the main course. I ordered the lamb bhona— chunks of lamb cooked in a spicy tomato-based sauce with onions and green peppers. The sauce wasn’t terribly nuanced, and the meat was a little dry. I wanted more of the interesting spices like cardamom, cumin and coriander that make India food so fantastic. Still, the rich creaminess of the whole dish made it somewhat appealing. Vladimir Pudding ordered the vegetable vindaloo. It looked remarkably like the lamb dish, with smaller chunks of cauliflower, potato and carrots and no lamb. The sauce was also considerably spicier than the lamb’s, making the dish earning it extra points in my book. 
We weren’t going to order dessert, but small plate of a carrot pudding were delivered to our table free of charge. It seems our servers felt sorry for the shrill radiator noise that had driven us to abandon our first table. The pudding was subtly sweet with an edge of coconut. Again, it wasn’t the most phenomenal example of its kind, but it did the trick.
My good friend Mint Chip was in town a few weekends ago, staying at our apartment. In addition to shopping, touring the waterfall installation on the East River and seeing a Broadway show, Empanada Boy and I wanted to take her out to some good meals. We went one night to 
The restaurant is all but unmarked when you approach it from the Essex Street side. There are small silver letters that read “Essex” on the side of the building, although these could just as easily refer to the street name. Inside, the restaurant is split onto two levels with a bar and booths downstairs and more tables upstairs. Exposed brick walls set the tone for the industrial chic decor, which includes a warehouse-like ceiling and simple metal railings. We were there on a Monday night, which meant $1 oysters and half-price drinks, including cocktails, beer and wine by the glass. Cocktails seemed generally too vodka-y and sweet for my taste— EB learned this the hard way— but the wine and beer lists were decent. Needless to say, the poor graduate student in me was pleased. We ordered nine oysters and awaited their arrival eagerly.
The oysters (see top photo) were remarkably fresh and clean, better than some we’d tried recently at a much fancier place in Chicago. They slid down nicely, with no need for the marring taint of Worcestershire or retro cocktail sauce. EB decided to pair some turf with his surf and ordered the lamb chops with chorizo dumplings over Asian slaw. The meat was cooked to a perfect medium-rare, and, while not the most amazing lamb chop we’d tried flavor-wise, it may have been the best under $20. I wasn’t a huge fan of the chorizo dumplings. They were too heavy and a bit under-spiced. Small pieces of chorizo were also present in the main course I ordered: steamed mussels in a tomato cilantro broth. The broth was interesting— like a cross between a cioppino and a salsa. The chorizo wasn’t Mexican, but it also didn’t have the depth of flavor of a top notch Spanish chorizo. Still, at $10 (plus $2 for frites) this, might be one of the best deals in New York. Essex also has a traditional garlic and white wine preparation that I’m hoping to try soon.
Mint Chip ordered the blackened catfish over shrimp, potato and scallion hash. The fish was perfectly done and well seasoned, and the shrimp and hash beneath it were surprisingly delicious. Amazingly, the $16 cost of this meal came pretty close to what it might cost to make the dish at home in my own kitchen.
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