If you drink good beer, Drop Off Service is worth your time. If you happen to be a reasonably-attractive lady who drinks good beer, there’s probably somebody here who wants to talk to you. I’m not promising unicorns and rainbows, but it may not be a particularly off-putting experience either. Someone may try to sell you a glow-in-the-dark toy, invite you to his Bushwick-tastic gallery, ask you about the finer points of hobbit fashion, perform feats like clicking his heels together in mid-air (harder than it looks, if you’re not a leprechaun), or apologize for his overly-sniffy French Bulldog. A dog is an ideal entrée if you enjoy random conversations, but don’t relish starting them, and at this bar canine wing-men are welcome, as long as they’re well-behaved. Another rare sighting in Manhattan watering holes–a solitary reader squinting at a book–is also a regular here. In fact if it weren’t for the variety of its patrons, Drop Off Service would feel friendly enough to exist a river removed from Manhattan. The fact that it has an impressive beer list, and a generous happy hour, lasting from 3pm-8pm (1pm-8pm on weekends), is the basis of its appeal. Many of the draft beers are $3 during the popular 3-8 shift, including Yuengling, Magic Hat, Fuller’s London Pride, and Six Point’s Sweet Action Ale. A pint of Stone Brewing Company’s Arrogant Bastard Ale is a steal at $4, there’s usually a cask ale for $5, and Delerium Tremens–a Belgian ale that hovers at about 9% ABV–will run you a reasonable $7.

If you get hungry, not to worry. Tuck Shop meat pies are available, or even better, run next door to Zaragoza for some tacos ($2.50-$3.00), and bring them back to the bar to fuel another round. These are not gourmet foodstuffs–Zaragoza is a hole-in-the-wall Mexican grocery with a microwave and few hot trays, and it can be hit or miss depending on what’s available that day. The other night, the amount of hot sauce on my spicy pork taco hurt my face, while a tamale ($2.00) was rather enjoyable. But $6 for a taco and a pint of Sweet Action, plus some free entertainment? Sure, I’ll be right over.

Drop Off Service
211 Ave. A between 13th St. and 14th St.
Mon-Fri 3pm-4am, Sat-Sun 1pm-4am

Zaragoza
215 Avenue A between 13th St. and 14th St.
Mon-Thu 9:30am-12am, Fri-Sat 9:30am-4am, Sun 10:30pm-12am

Six Manhattan chefs from six different well-regarded restaurants, each given a different liquor, and tasked to come up with a cocktail and a dish to accompany it. Add dozens of hungry foodies. Stir. Result? A hell of a fun night and a for-the-ages hangover the next day. This event, held on Jan 25th and coordinated by the Edible Magazines network (Edible Manhattan is my favorite food magazine right now–unlike Saveur, it’s locally focused, and the features are more digestible than those in ploddingly academic Gastronomica), was a follow-up to their Good Beer party in July. The tickets were $40, but since this included an all-you-can-handle cocktail throwdown with a magazine subscription to boot, I figured it would be well worth it as long as I ate and drank everything in sight.

The chefs set up tables around the perimeter of Almond Restaurant and guests freely wandered from station to station, eating and imbibing as much as they saw fit. We attempted small bites first: a celery root and apple terrine accompanied by an Orange Blossom (orange bitters, St. Germain, sparkling wine) was our first stop. Coming from Gramercy Tavern, it was a bit of a letdown. Moving right along, Ilili’s smoked venison carpaccio with hummus, apple, and cinnamon chile oil served with a Sidon Rose (vodka, green apple, rose syrup) was my first taste of venison, and a pleasant one. The next dish, Resto’s fennel and juniper lamb bacon with beet and caramelized yogurt, was my favorite of the small bites (although I went easy on the gin, green chartreuse, lemon, and peach Lambic concoction served with it, since gin is my nemesis).

The next two dishes were the highlights of the evening. First we braved the long line for a roasted sweet corn tamale topped with two succulent white shrimp, chipotle butter and avocado pico de gallo, paired with a powerfully tart and boozy La Sombrilla Roja (mezcal, campari, lemon, lime and grapefruit). Rocking Horse Cafe contributed this pairing, and I’m eager to try the restaurant based on it. This was followed by Il Buco’s persimmon, hazlenut and fennel salad, served with the il Buco sour (bourbon, persimmon, lemon, thyme, and Sagrentino Passito). I’d never eaten a persimmon before, which really upped the ante on a disarmingly simple salad. Il Buco is also now high on my list of restaurants to try. My favorite cocktail of the evening came next, the J.M. Ginger (rum, pear puree, ginger syrup, red wine sorbet, and a ginger-sugar rim). This was served with a crepinette of lamb neck, with celery root puree and kumquat-basil marmalade, from Almond.

After seconds of the tamales and J.M. Gingers, we sampled a tray of Roni-Sue chocolates but my stamina was fading by the time we passed the coffee and brandy pairing. After scooping up some free Edible magazines, we swung by the Heartland Brewery table to sample a hopped-up and super-malty Mr. Atlas Pale Ale and a chocolatey, pitch-black Sumatra Porter. This to my mind makes a better dessert than a wedge of pie, but perhaps it was fortunate that we were near the door, because it occurred to us to roll out of there before we could do too much more damage to ourselves. My guess is that the amount I ate and drank would have cost at least three times the price of the ticket in a restaurant, so all-in-all it was a bargain, despite a dearth of seating. I am never, ever mixing that many liquors together again, but I’m totally checking out the next Edible event.

Edible Manhattan
Good Spirits at Almond pairings
Almond Restaurant
12 East 22nd St. between Broadway and Park Ave.

You can eat poutine any time of year, but this Quebecoise treat tastes best when it’s really, really cold outside. I’m talking Montreal in January cold, the kind of frigidness that invades unusual places like your eyeballs and your teeth. Now that I don’t drive a car anymore, I don’t mind winter. I enjoy having an excuse to stay home, drinking dark beer and swaddling myself in layers of wool–the better to hide the gut I’m packing from savoring my favorite foods. Poutine is actually very simple–it’s just french fries and cheese curds, melted into savory gobs under a layer of steaming gravy. But it is somewhat tricky to execute. Proper curds are not easy to find, the fries should be fresh, the gravy ratio MUST be perfect, and a snowstorm backdrop doesn’t hurt either. Unlike your typical diner cheese fries, which fill you with self-loathing and regret, poutine, when it’s done right, warms your cockles, which I believe are located somewhere somewhere between your gullet and your spleen.

Poutine is pretty rare in the States but there are a few places in New York City that serve it. On Saturday, I checked out TPoutine on Ludlow Street, a relatively-new burgers-and-fries shop advantageously located in the booze-soaked Lower East Side. A classic poutine ran a steep $7.25, and came served in an appealing iron skillet, the curds just beginning to melt in their gravy bath. The cheese curds tasted authentic, and were generously-sized, although this possibly prevented them from completely melting. The fries, to their credit, maintained a fair amount of crispness, but the gravy didn’t taste much more than hot. A friend’s plate arrived with entirely too much gravy, which soon made the fries soggy, so it may be to your advantage to tell them to go light. All-in-all, this did a fair job satiating my poutine craving, but I’m told it’s not as tasty as the stuff you’d find in Montreal. TPoutine is open til 5am on weekends, so I could foresee a making late-night pit stop, but I’d probably keep looking for the really good stuff–my next destinations will likely be Mile End or Sheep Station in Brooklyn. There’s also decent and cheaper version available at Pommes Frites in the East Village.

TPoutine
168 Ludlow St between Stanton St & Houston St.
Tue-Wed 12pm-2am, Thu-Sat 12pm-5am, Sun 12pm-2am

Dining-out disappointments on this scale only happen once in a blue moon so Snackish has returned from vacation to share the tale of her spotty dinner at The Spotted Pig. I’d been eager to to try this place for a long time. It is the gastropub of gastropubs in New York City–starred by Michelin, revered by Yelpers, and favored by the Times. Celebrities knock elbows with plebians in its small confines and its kitchen, bolstered by a well-regarded chef, supposedly justifies the sceneyness. I even have a couple of first-hand accounts from friends who said they liked it.

So Saturday night my associate and I finally landed at the Pig. After not-unbearable half-hour wait (they don’t accept reservations, you must walk in and put your name on the list) we were seated at the coldest table in the house, near the door. (Lest you think I’m a bloodless wimp, a bearded dude sitting next to us wore his coat and hat throughout the evening). But my need for food was greater than my need for warmth so I ordered a pint of highly-enjoyable Sixpoint Righteous Rye cask ale to combat the draft. Appetizers arrived in the form of perfectly-paprikaed deviled eggs ($3) and a plate of “devils on horseback”–pear-stuffed prunes wrapped in sticky candied bacon, speared with toothpicks ($7). They tasted better then they looked but were powerfully sweet, salty, and not entirely pleasant. My next course was the sheep’s milk ricotta gnudi in brown butter sauce with fried sage ($15). The sheep’s milk added an interesting bite to these tender dumplings, and I enjoyed the crispy sage, but yet again the dish was overwhelmingly salty. Next came more beer and an epically-proportioned burger under a heap of paper-shaving thin “shoestring” fries. Someone had tried, unsuccessfully, to make the fries substantive by adding a copious amount of rosemary. The burger all but disappeared under the funk of the Roquefort cheese which stubbornly adhered to the bun. I suspect it was a good-enough burger, but it was hard to taste anything but cheese, and for $17, I expected to be in burger heaven.

(Rosemary fries comin’ atcha. Run!)

At this point our server wandered off and we spent several minutes getting drunker and chatting with a couple next to us, who were similarly underwhelmed. By the time the she re-appeared, the sting of how much this meal would cost was sufficiently diffused for us to order dessert. I had a scotch and the creme caramel–a fine take on creme brulee ($8)–while my associate wound up with a stale-tasting walnut tart (perplexingly, the server recommended it but it was the worst thing we had all night).

Aside from the tart, I can’t say any one thing about the meal was terrible. But the combination of the wait, bad seating, strange seasoning, sluggish service, and just-beyond-reasonable prices is enough to keep me from going back. In retrospect the burger, perhaps, was not the thing to get (but judging by the steady stream of burgers floating by on servers’ upraised hands while we waited, it seemed to be a house specialty). I can say that the space had a convivial upscale-pub atmosphere and seemed to be full of pretty and interesting people. If you’re lucky enough to grab a seat upstairs you’ll probably stay warm, and on an off night I could see it being pleasant to cozy up to the bar for a pint of Righteous Rye and some deviled eggs. But I suspect that the Spotted Pig’s off nights are as few and far between as my epic dining disappointments.

The Spotted Pig
314 West 11th St. at Greenwich St.
Brunch: 11am-3pm (weekends), Lunch: 12-3pm, Dinner: 5:30pm-2am
Bar Menu: 3pm-5pm

Looking for a decent soft pretzel in New York City is a little like being thirsty in the middle ocean. There are pretzels everywhere, sold from ubiquitous street carts, but they’re completely inedible. Occaisionally one stumbles across handmade pretzels at a German bar like Loreley or Zum Scheider, but these places lack the get-it-and-go convenience of a cart. Sigmund Pretzel Shop, which opened last month, finally gives the Bavarian snack its due. A cafe and bakery headed by a former Bouley pastry chef, Sigmund sells fresh pretzels made on-site in small batches. Flavors include jalapeño cheddar, gruyere and paprika, garlic and parsley, salt, sesame, poppy, whole wheat, caramel, and cinnamon raisin ($3.00-$3.50). A choice of dip–whipped butter, herbed goat cheese, cream cheese, whole-grain mustard, honey mustard, or horseradish mayo–is included.  Pretzel sandwiches and donuts are also available.

The jalapeno-cheddar pretzel was by far my favorite. It was doughy and still-warm, with the cheese forming slightly-crunchy crust. Its lack of spice was forgiven since the whole-grain mustard dip added the needed kick. Although best eaten warm, it also travels extremely well. The cinnamon raisin pretzel with butter walked a fine line between savory and sweet, without being overly sugary or greasy. The passionfruit coconut donut was basically a thin doughy shell surrounding an intriguingly sweet-and-tart custard, but on the whole, I found it a little too sweet for a snack.

Seating is available, and with the smell of fresh-baked bread wafting from the kitchen and a row of windows overlooking Avenue B, this is a mellow place to stop for a quick bite. Try to go earlier to grab a fresh pretzel–they start selling out near closing time.

Sigmund Pretzel Shop
29 Avenue B between 2nd and 3rd St.
Tues-Sun 10am-10pm or until sold out. Closed Mon.