NYC Places to Eat: Offal Opposites

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Parent Category: Travel Info

Category: Places To Eat

Published on Thursday, 20 May 2010 11:47

Written by Perry Santanachote

For Chichi Wang, a weekly patron of Chinatown’s Xi’an Famous Foods on East Broadway, offal -- the bits of beasts that for the last half-century have been discarded or distrusted by many Westerners -- is comfort food.

“My mother would always have gizzards on hand and she would simmer them in a classic Chinese braise of soy sauce, sugar, star anise and cinnamon sticks,” said the 25-year-old writer/foodie. “To this day all I need is just one whiff of that aroma and it brings me back home.”

But while offal may be new and exciting discovery for many Americans who grew up in the homogenized grocery store culture, a lot of people in ethnic communities simply consider it every day fare.  Whether it’s because offal cuts are cheaper or because the texture is prized, nearly every culture – aside from traditional American – loves its blood and guts.

Walk into any hole-in-the-wall joint in Chinatown or Flushing, Queens, where offal isn’t a buzzword and you’ll find congee with cubes of blood, hand-pulled noodles in beef broth made of tendon, tripe and tail, or fish head soup.

Considered an offal paradise among enthusiasts, Xi’an Famous Foods serves its liang pi noodles with every imaginable variety of offal cuts, from gizzards to ears.  The cold, juicy Chinese noodles at the restaurant’s locations in Flushing and Chinatown are the perfect example of a long-held tradition in nose-to-tail eating.

Now Wang, a food writer and offal expert, is working on a cookbook that will explore in depth what she calls the “fifth quarter.”  She said the nose-to-tail eating she was exposed to while growing up fundamentally shaped the way she cooks and eats today.  

“I have one tiny advantage, which is that I grew up eating these things,” said Wang.  “So for me it’s very much a part of who I am and not a trendy thing that I fell in love with.”

She eats offal nearly every day and writes about it in her Serious Eats column called “The Nasty Bits” and her own blog, TheOffalCook.com.

Always on the hunt for great offal, Wang has a few observations on the differences between the new chefs and old chefs who come from a culinary tradition of using it.

First is presentation. She said that chefs at upscale eateries have to present offal so that it no longer looks like offal, otherwise people won’t buy it.

“If they’re going to have to confit a whole tongue, they can’t just plop a tongue on a plate. They’re going to have to burnish it and make it look appealing,” said Wang.  “Whereas if you go to a Cantonese restaurant and you order chicken feet, you’re going to get a bowl with tiny hands inside – and they don’t care that it looks like hands.”

The second difference is that most of the newer chefs working with offal are still based in French and Italian cuisine, so they often prepare dishes like confited innards and pate terrines. Although that is changing. Explained Wang, “More and more chefs are starting to borrow from other cuisines that have been preparing offal for a really long time.”

Her primary example is David Chang, the Korean-American chef of the acclaimed Momofuku restaurants, who has become somewhat of a liaison between the established Western cuisine and traditional Korean cuisine.

Wang added, “David Chang is probably one of the first chefs to be able to stand up for Asian cuisine as it is and to really be able to communicate why it’s so good."

But even Chang has to tame his flavors to suit the Western palate. For example, he’ll use new kimchi rather than kimchi that’s been fermented for months, which is what Koreans typically use because it’s more pungent, sour and spicy.

“But cuisines are always adapting and I don’t buy the argument that it’s not as good because it’s not traditional,” she said. “Taste doesn’t lie – if it’s good, it’s good.”

The third difference between newcomer and long-time offal cooks is that chefs in high-end restaurants get their offal from sustainable and local farms like Fleisher’s in Kingston, where Wang recently took a butchery apprenticeship.  When she tasted the tongue of a grass-fed and grain-finished cow, she said she immediately noticed its superiority over the tongue she would buy from Assi, a Korean market in Flushing.

“The quality of the tongue was just so high that very little had to be done to make it taste delicious,” said Wang.  “That’s one thing that these newer chefs definitely have to their advantage. They’re able to get those animals and their customers are willing to pay the prices for that offal.”  

She added, however, that in Asian restaurants, the preparation is sometimes so masterful that it tastes really good even though the animals they use aren’t nearly as well raised.

Whether it’s the caramelized sweetbreads at Jean-Georges, the pig foot Milanese at Babbo or the braised tongue omelette at Prune, dishes featuring offal are now the starlets on five-star menus.

Uptown from Xi’an Famous Foods is Craftbar, little sis to Tom Colicchio’s Craft, and one of the high-end restaurants that get offal from local sustainable farms. On Broadway and East 20th St., Craftbar offers an entire section completely devoted to offal. Chef de cuisine Lauren Hirschberg introduced it in 2009 with a modest three items but the selection quickly grew over the year. The staples have been chicken liver pate, sweetbreads, beef tongue and pig head terrine. Then he would place and pull items as they became available, such as his personal favorite – tripe -- which he prepares in the Italian Florentine style with sofrito, herbs and Parmesan.

Hirschberg said he thinks the rise of offal in American culture is partly due to its increased exposure on television via chefs like Gordon Ramsay, Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain, famous for his adventures in extreme cuisines.  But it was the enthusiasm of chefs like Chris Cosentino of San Francisco’s Incanto that elevated offal’s stature among their brethren and paved the way for a new niche in fine dining.

These days, the humble scraps are no longer the poor man’s leftovers because more and more chefs like Cosentino, extol the virtues of eating all parts of an animal. Many now buy their animals whole from sustainable farms and have recovered traditional techniques in butchery that tend to be more economical, both in dollars and usage of the animal.

Hirschberg orders one 200-pound pig each week from Van Wie Farms or Fossil Farms, which costs around $800. In addition he also orders five beef tongues, 20 pounds of sweetbreads and 20 pounds of chicken livers a week from other farms such as J.T. Jobbagy, Debragga and Spitler.

And it sells every week. He recalled a recent week when he put a beef tongue ravioli on the menu, cooked with black truffles and fava shoots, which sold 15 to 20 orders a night – nearly 90% of the stock.

Though the 30 year-old chef has been cooking with offal for six years because of a sincere love for it, he can think of another reason that may compel other chefs to take the plunge.

As he added, “In a place like New York City where rent is high and overhead is high and food costs a lot of money – if you can make one or two awesome dishes out of something that is pretty cheap to kind of offset your cost, then why not do it?”

Of course, that’s another thing his counterparts down in Chinatown knew all along.

Xi’an Famous Foods
88 East Broadway #106,
New York, NY 10002
www.xianfoods.com

Jean-Georges
1 Central Park West
New York, NY 10023
www.jean-georges.com/

Babbo
110 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
www.babbonyc.com/

Prune
54 E 1st St.
New York, NY 10003
www.prunerestaurant.com

Momofuku Sam Bar
207 2nd Ave.
New York, NY 10003
www.momofuku.com

Craftbar
900 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
www.craftrestaurant.com

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