Some Spicy Words about Spice Market
Usually I limit my restaurant rantings to Zagat’s reviews or a select group of food loving friends. However, as I continue to hear such positive buzz about this place, I want to add my voice to the din. The restaurant? Spice Market, culinary icon Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s contribution to Manhattan’s Meat Packing District.
Last night my glamorous friend Timmy and I went to the ultra “hip and hot” Asian restaurant Spice Market. Located three blocks south of Chelsea Market in a former warehouse, the crowded, dimly-lit, Asian-inspired Spice Market had received 3 stars from the NY Times for Vongerichten’s take on Southeast Asian street food.
Unique to Spice Market was its concept of Asian family style dining, described by our orange pajama-clad waiter as “food served as its prepared.” (Okay, isn’t that how food is typically served? As it’s prepared?) In layman’s terms, if the cook finishes your meal before your appetizer and before your dining companion’s entree, your meal is served first, in a common bowl, from which everyone eats.
Tim and I shared three grease-laden chicken samosas (minced dark meat only), each about the size of a folded dollar bill and accompanied by a mint-yogurt dip. These were preceded by three small pieces of coconut-crusted, deep-fried monkfish, each curiously folded and skewered with a toothpick. A dollop of tamarind paste topped each.
Tim’s entree choice, a cereal bowl-sized portion of pork vindaloo with a side of white rice, began the evening meal. A very odd dessert consisting of a slender slice of glazed, grilled banana, caramel popcorn and a thin wedge of ovaltine-flavored fudge capped off the culinary adventure. The uncomposed dessert was finished off with whipped creme and colored sprinkles, known in some camps as “jimmies.”
We began and ended our dining experience using the same 5″x7″, white plates. Certainly if I were dining at a street cart on a dusty street in Saigon, I would expect to use the same plate. In fact I would be grateful even to have a plate. However, when I am paying between $19-25 for an entree and at least $9 for a dessert, I expect more than a small, dirty dish to carry me through the evening.
I would also have expected to have my appetite satiated more than it was. Less than hour after returning from dinner I was standing in my Upper West Side kitchen, toasting an English muffin and sipping a glass of orange juice. The fashionable can keep Spice Market. I’m going where I dine from a clean plate and, most importantly, actually have something to eat!