review: annisa, or, on being overcritical

annisa / 13 barrow street, new york / 212-741-6699 / m-sat 5:30-10:30, sun 5:30-9:30 / appetizers $9-18, entrees $27-33

when i was in chicago, i always felt awkward having dinner by myself - i always have that problem, when not in cambridge, where i can't find people who share my predilection for eating out at nice restaurants. luckily i have (a) grown out of this phase; (b) know a couple of people who will go with me on occasion; and (c) feel more comfortable eating out by myself in new york than in most cities. it's also true that i'm a student and can't afford a whole lot of nice dinners, but this summer i'm in new york and i want to make the most of it. this is partly why i currently have three jobs (yeah, don't ask...i just have trouble saying no).

most of the time, though, i do prefer to eat out with other people. yesterday's partner in crime: j, who lives in brooklyn and is also interning this summer. we went to annisa, which is actually just a few blocks from my apartment. additional sidebar: i feel really weird when i come and go from my apartment since it's right in the middle of a busy, trendy area - all of these people have come to the neighborhood to go out, and i'm going up to my apartment to stay in because i don't feel like going out when everybody else is out too. yes, i am living in new york despite my aversion to large crowds of people. i'm avoiding times square like the plague.

dinner at annisa brought up an interesting question: what do you value more, the company you have at dinner, or the food itself, and how does that affect how you perceive the dining experience you had? for me, it's a little complicated. i usually pick a place because there's something interesting about the food - chez henri, for example, has french-cuban food that i have yet to try - but i also want to have good company when i'm at the restaurant. so i do want both, but there is a significance to the order of operations. and once i'm at the restaurant, good company goes a long way towards covering for subpar food. sometimes, the food is really that good - like when we went to o ya - and sometimes, just the act of going out and relaxing at dinner with someone makes you ignore any shortcomings until later.

reflecting on this a couple of days later, i think annisa falls in the latter category for me, because i found myself being really critical of the dinner itself. part of this, surely, is due to my expectations being higher for new york restaurants because of its vaunted reputation as one of the best restaurant cities in the country. i suspect that the strength of new york's food scene is more about the range of food, though. because i have been to the vast majority of restaurants worth going to in boston, and i can tell you that we eat pretty well there.

back to annisa. i had been grumpy all week, so it was really great to go to a nice restaurant that wasn't cramped and didn't rush you. with respect to service and decor, annisa does quite well. it's nothing to knock you out, but it acquits itself well notwithstanding. and we were there for over three hours, and they only rushed us once or twice at the end.

so now you've been reading for a while and you're wondering about the food, especially after this ridiculously long exposition. well, we started with an amuse bouche: a tiny little fluted cup that had chicken liver puree piped into it, topped with a couple of currants. the cup was edible - it seemed to be some sort of savory tuile, and i assume it was at least made with that technique, where the batter thins out while it bakes and then you mold it right when it comes out of the oven. i suppose it could also have been made by brushing the batter into a mold and baking it, but the batter would have to be the perfect consistency and the oven a very precise temperature in order for the batter not to pool before setting up. this was very nice, if not particularly original; it had a fantastic contrast in texture, with the crunch of the cup. and you can't argue with an amuse bouche that actually triggers an entire conversation about the joys of eating liver.

i'll mention the bread here too, since i harped on that in my review of banq. the bread is uninspired here - i prefer an amuse bouche to bread. i've thought a bit more about this and here's my position on bread at restaurants: unless it's something interesting, or particularly good quality, i don't really want it. to restaurants everywhere: i hope you're trying to impress me with your bread, because i'm paying attention. i don't need it to be spectacular, i just want it to make sense. i'll even give you an example: bringing around a roll is a ploy used at pigalle to pace your meal, so you have something to do while you wait between appetizer and main course. in general, i'm just not a big bread eater: i'm used to starting a meal with soup, an amuse bouche, salad, etc. i also prefer to eat my bread with butter, and sprinkled with sugar, and usually you don't get a sugar bowl at restaurants with the bread. i'm just not a fan of a cold roll with a hard crust to start off a dinner. exceptions to this rule: if the bread is interesting or just plain good (a la restaurant pava, or even just the soft foccacia-like bread they serve at central kitchen with hummus); if it's served with interesting accompaniments like antipasto or really good butter; if i've ordered a bowl of soup and want to pretend i'm french and wipe the bowl with the bread; if the bread is toasted; if i'm really, amazingly hungry and can't wait until the food starts arriving. that's how i feel about bread: now you know.

at annisa, they do the nondescript roll thing. not only do they come by once, they come by about every 20-30 minutes. this is nice for the people who have ordered something that they want bread with - a very saucy dish, etc - and it recognizes that your preference may change within the course of the meal. but it's also kind of annoying, in all reality, because the bread's not even that great. i can't really be mad, because i do actually appreciate that people who may feel awkward or greedy asking for more bread are accommodated. i think i'm projected my dislike of the bread itself onto the practice with which it was distributed. i mean, seriously, annisa: you can do better than this. kudos for butter being at the correct temperature, though! and it was really lovely - those shell-shaped curls of butter with gorgeous luster. you know i ate some bread just to eat it with that butter.

first course: we split an appetizer - the soup dumplings with foie gras. you know, i heard good things about these, and i was a little disappointed. first of all, the dumpling skin was the wrong one for soup dumplings - it wasn't very pliable, and it was more like a thickish wonton wrapper. i'm not an expert on soup dumplings, but i do know that the skins are stretchier and softer than these were. if they were handmade, and i hope they were, the dough was kneaded too much or the skins were undercooked. the basic preparation, before you get totally confused, was this: a square plate drizzled with some sort of soy reduction, four half-moon shaped dumplings placed on the reduction, a piece of foie gras placed on each dumpling. if you're reading "half moon shaped" and thinking "soup dumpling?" you're correct: no soup dumpling i ever ate in china or chinatown was missing its distinctive flower/fluted top. the soup dumpling technique is one i haven't tried and know would be relatively difficult to master, what with the complicated folding. so yeah, the technique, or lack thereof, annoyed me. and one of the dumplings had a hole in it already! would thomas keller have let the dish go out like that? i don't think so.

after all was said and done, though, these tasted pretty good. they needed a little bit more soup to really warrant the name soup dumpling, but the pork inside was excellent. i really fail to see the necessity of the foie gras, but it was nice anyway. i think it should have been crispier on the outside, for more textural contrast. in case you haven't noticed, i'm a big believer in contrast, be it textural or flavorwise. i think a little bit of something acidic or sweet would have balanced the dish better - a bit of pickled ginger, or a little bit of rice vinegar. and in fact, soup dumplings are served with pickled veg and vinegar.

the main course that i got was chicken with a white truffle sauce, asparagus, and pig's foot. in all reality, there were more interesting things on the menu with respect to flavor combinations, but i saw pig's foot and my decision was made for me. you know i love any kind of pork product. j had roasted lamb tenderloin with szechuan peppercorns and some other accompaniments. i thought the chicken was quite good - certainly it was roasted very deftly, with the requisite crackly skin and tender interior, though not too tender. it turned out that the pigs foot was diced - both gelatinous tendon and meat - and the chicken was resting on top of it. it was pretty good, but i thought it was a little unadventurous for the merits of pig's feet. i know that most chicken dishes on restaurant menus are for the unadventurous, but i always hope the chicken is good anyway. and this was good - above average, really - but i felt a little like it was just very good bistro fare. j's lamb tenderloin was great, though - perfectly cooked and really interesting spices.

ok, dessert: j didn't feel like dessert, but i do like to have dessert anytime i go out - i've got a sweet tooth just like everyone else. desserts looked pretty standard, but i got the poppyseed bread and butter pudding with lemon curd. i've made a lot of bread puddings and eaten a lot of them at restaurants, and the best one used to be a tie between a chocolate bread pudding i make and a white chocolate-blueberry bread pudding i had once at central kitchen. this one has joined the top ranks - it had a crispy top layer of bread cubes, and a bottom layer that was saturated with egg and had perfect custard consistency. the lemon curd was a nice touch, too - this is not a new flavor combination, but its use in a bread pudding was great. and to go back to textural contrast, having the crunchier top and mooshy bottom was pretty awesome.

after the table had been cleared, we got one last course of mignardises, like at the french laundry. or the tiny cookies that perilla gives you...with the bill. i'd advise you to skip the ones here. we had a mango popsicle, crystallized ginger, and a mint chocolate truffle (two of each). all three were too sweet - i think the mango should have been more like a frozen sherbert, though the crystallized ginger was definitely the best i've had, with quite a kick to it. i found the truffle to be too sweet as well, which is just a waste of good chocolate.

overall, i enjoyed my dinner at annisa because of the good company, and great ambiance on the restaurant's part. but if we're talking food, i can think of a lot of restaurants in boston that are better. the menu here is supposed to be asian-inspired, but it's a bit lackadaisical in its inspirations. although i'm sure this isn't the case, it felt to me like the chef has a rather one-dimensional perspective on asian flavors, because they really are kind of staid. i don't know if i'll be back - perilla is a lot more honest with itself about what it is, and how far it's reaching - but it was, despite everything, a lovely evening.

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side note: i'm going to per se tomorrow for lunch! i'm excited, because i'm curious to know how it compares to the french laundry. i know this is an expensive way to find out, especially with the increases in food prices, but it's now or never - turns out jessica is visiting this weekend and there was an open spot in her reservation. awesome. i wish i could bring myself to take photos, but i just can't be that annoying girl.