Posts tagged ‘East Village’

My family will be in New York next month and we’ll be attending an event on 12th St. in the East Village. Where can I take them to eat that night? They’re a bit of a meat-and-potatoes crowd, but it would also be great to suggest some hipper places for my cousin when he sheds the parents.

The East Village is one of the best areas for dining in Manhattan—you can wander any of the Avenues and find at least one satisfying place to eat on each block. But since you’ve restricted it to the northern end, I can narrow it down to a few parent-pleasing options around 12th St.

The meat-and-potatoes crowd will feel very comfortable at Back Forty (190 Avenue B at 12th St.). It’s an ingredient-driven “haute barnyard” menu—basics like roast chicken and vegetables, grilled trout, and the house burger—prepared unfussily. If any member of your group wants to splurge on a house cocktail, I highly recommend you try one or two of the seasonal selections. My friend Lisa’s favorite, the strawberry-based The Red and the Black, only comes around in the summer when the berries are in the greenmarkets, but you can try it at your leisure with her recipe.
>> Read on to find out where to impress the out-of-towners with bacon peanut brittle >>

At $22 per person, the Mermaid Inn Monday-night crab boil is not only cheaper than Back Forty’s similar promotion, but a hell of a lot easier to access. I made an OpenTable reservation while taking care of three other tasks at work without breaking a sweat.

All considered, $22 was a fair price for the mixed bag that was dumped in front of us. The server poured the whole kaboodle out of the metal bucket onto the papered table—8 or 9 crabs, baby red potatoes, corn, and an inordinately large amount of seasoned cooking water. We were fighting off the creeping deluge throughout the night as it saturated the table and made its way ever closer to our laps.

And really, the cooks should have just left the sides in the cooler where they had clearly been for a while . The corn was ossified and the potatoes were flavorless—one of them was even sprouting hair—so we were very glad to have started off the meal with six chilled and bracingly fresh Pemaquid oysters.

Still, the crabs gave themselves up easily and the meat inside our hard-shelled suckers was flaky, not mushy, and seasoned well with a spicy Old Bay mix. We were happy just to pick away, suck out the leg meat, and watch the pile of shells and napkins accumulate.

I had to scrub up in the bathroom like a surgeon after the meal, lathering myself up to my elbows to clean off the liquid that had dripped down my arms. This is why summertime is perfect for this type of chowdown: no sleeves to get in the way.

As is tradition at the Mermaid Inn, free chocolate pudding and a fortune-telling fish went a long way to end the evening on an up note. And as Lisa astutely noted, the point of a crab boil isn’t to stuff yourself to the point of oblivion – you would need an awful lot of crustacean devastation to get to that point. It’s a way to linger and let yourselves work your way through a lot of good conversation as you concentrate. It’s a meal that’s built for sharing in every sense of the word.

Blue Crab Mondays run through August 31, so those of you in the mood for some cheap crabs have a few more weeks to get yourself down to the East Village. Just ask your waitstaff to triple-ply your table with kraft paper and napkins.

The Mermaid Inn, 96 Second Ave., New York. 212-674-5870 or reservations on OpenTable.

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