Dining Review | Westchester: A Review of Muscoot Tavern, in Somers

Bright red and oddly shaped, the restaurant, positioned at an angle and tucked away from the intersection of Routes 35 and 100 in Somers, has been in business since before 1925. Helmed by a series of owners and called Muscoot Diner, Muscoot Restaurant, Muscoot Inn — and for a short, wayward time, Little Brauhaus — the Scoot, as it is affectionately referred to by local residents, was taken over last year by Ann-Margaret Wagner and Eddie Lubic, owner of Eduardo’s in Mount Kisco.

The two gave the restaurant a face-lift with a new kitchen, fresh paint and repaired air-conditioning. But evocative details remain: terrazzo floors are worn bare by thousands of feet, bowed walls show the effects of time, and the bar looks like the meeting place it has been for countless get-togethers over the years.

A menu of good-value comfort food adds to the neighborhood-meeting-place feel. No one gets dressed up to go the Scoot, and the food is similarly straightforward. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t good — and sometimes very good. Steamed little neck clams in garlic butter broth were plump, sweet emissaries of the sea. A baby spinach salad was just-picked fresh and came with chunks of hard-boiled egg, red onion, terrific croutons, tomato and a vinaigrette that — like all of the Scoot’s sauces and dressings — was house-made. And a New York strip with mushroom sauce was a nice piece of steak cooked just to order and accompanied by garlicky mashed potatoes.

There are items you can get only at the Scoot, like Ann-Margaret’s Famous Fresh Rotisserie Chicken Dinner, half a chicken cooked to crispy but juicy deliciousness with a sweet sauce that married well with the rice pilaf and sautéed spinach sides. The meatballs were huge and garlicky, served with a mound of excellent ricotta over spaghetti, and the tasty clams casino, prepared according to “Eddie’s own recipe,” includes a secret combination of spices. The desserts, which change nightly, are mostly old fashioned and house-made. Though the rice pudding was watery and underdone and the chocolate layer cake was a bit stale, the German chocolate cake, made with just the right amount of shredded coconut and big chunks of pecans, was close to ideal.

Muscoot Tavern gives some nods to contemporary interests. Gluten-free pizza, pasta and buns are available. Whole wheat pasta is on the menu; Captain Lawrence beer, from Westchester’s own microbrewery, is on tap. And when extra virgin olive oil is used on a pizza, it is listed as just “EVOO.” But the approach remains old school. The calamari was served with a solid, basic marinara. The flavorful chicken wings come with classic blue cheese, celery and carrot sticks. And the chicken parmigiano was prepared the traditional way, with plenty of fresh mozzarella and that same marinara over linguine.

There is a popular lineup of thin-crust pizzas baked with fresh herbs. We tried “the Brooklyn,” which was basically a margherita, made with tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella and basil. It was lovely, but the best part of that evening was in simply watching the tables around us. The restaurant has live music on Saturday nights and a local guitarist and singer were playing. Children were happily running around, and their parents were greeting each other across tables. As the waiters deftly wove through the crowd, it was easy to imagine the same scene decades ago. Little has changed at places like Muscoot Tavern, and it is its link to the past — before subdivisions and S.U.V.’s, too-fussy food and “mixologists” — that is the restaurant’s greatest appeal.

?

Muscoot Tavern

105 Somerstown Turnpike, (Route 100), Somers

(914) 232-2800

muscoottavern.com

GOOD

THE SPACE An odd-shaped, intriguing space with bowed walls, a low ceiling that opens up in the center and a well-worn floor. Wheelchair accessible.

THE CROWD Casual, relaxed, often families or groups. Waiters are attentive.

THE BAR A cozy, welcoming area along one side of the main room. The wine list is small and mostly house ($7 to $9 a glass; $24 to $75 a bottle), the beers ($4 to $7 a glass) are basic (with a few exceptions, including Westchester’s own Captain Lawrence), but the drinks are big and the bartender is friendly.

THE BILL 14-inch pizzas run $12 to $20; entrees, $14 to $19 or low $20s for the occasional special. Major credit cards accepted.

WHAT WE LIKED Clams casino, chicken wings, steamed clams, fried calamari, baby spinach salad (special); Brooklyn pizza, New York strip, Danish baby back ribs (special), spaghetti with meatballs, rotisserie chicken, chicken parmigiano with linguine, fried lobster tail (special); German chocolate cake (special), lava cake, brownie sundae.

IF YOU GO Open Monday to Thursday, noon to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, noon to midnight; Sunday, 4 to 10 p.m. Reservations for groups of eight or more only. Free parking on site.

RATINGS Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, Poor.

View the original article here

Dining Review | Connecticut: A Review of Spicy Green Bean, in Glastonbury

Wendy Carlson for The New York TimesColorful décor and convivial atmosphere define the dining at Spicy Green Bean in Glastonbury, Conn.

Let me begin my salute to B.Y.O.B. restaurants with a miser’s confession: I almost never spend more than $50 on wine. Whatever your particular price ceiling, bringing your own wine to a restaurant makes sterling sense. That $50 bottle on a restaurant’s wine list probably cost them $19, while they’d charge $100 for the $50 bottle you’re bringing. With the money you save, you can order a lot of extra starters.

Sliders stacked so high they sway.

And you’ll want to order them at Spicy Green Bean. The chef-owner Kathy Denisiewicz’s casual hole-in-the-wall eatery has built a cult following with its wildly eclectic, food-of-the-mood fiesta of delights. The dinner menu, rife with exclamation marks (“Super Duper Suppers!!!”) and neon-colored letters, hews to a simple format: each week, four different appetizers and four different entrees, as well as a big menu of sandwiches, soups and wraps, some listed under “Kooky Konkoctions.”

If it sounds cloyingly cute, the food is not. We enjoyed superb starter dishes, one after another. French onion soup contained a floating grilled-cheese sandwich made with sharp Irish Cheddar and bearing a dab of bright-green basil pesto. Pork sliders offered candied slabs of pork belly, fried nearly crunchy, on sweet rolls with lettuce, tomato and sriracha mayo. Equally yummy was a tower of fried green and vine-ripened red tomatoes layered with mozzarella, thin-sliced avocado and a generous pile of crab salad.

On and on it went, a jamboree of tastes. We dug eagerly into pancakes mined with spring peas and scallions and topped with smoked salmon, crème fraîche, dill and capers and bits of red onion. We fought over a plantain stuffed with ground beef and chorizo, welded together with melted Cheddar and slathered liberally with a cilantro-laden tomato salsa. Surf-and-turf sliders, stacked so high they swayed, combined a deep-fried oyster and seared steak and was garnished with lettuce, tomato and a horseradish cream. To make her out-of-this-world shrimp toasts, Ms. Denisiewicz coats slices of country white bread with cream cheese and scallions, crab Rangoon-style, then fries them and tops them with shrimp and a sifting of a secret spice combo from what she calls the Shaker of Love. (“Nice try,” she chuckled, when I asked later for the ingredients.)

Our final appetizer, an Asian short rib with macaroni and cheese, wasn’t on the menu, but a woman at the next table was eating it, providing my chance to utter the immortal restaurant line, “I’ll have what she’s having!” And sure enough, the dish proved the high point of the evening, a surreally tasty pork short rib, deep-fried till crisp, then tossed with salt and a sweet chili sauce combining scallions, brown sugar and habanero.

After such thrills, some entrees proved anticlimactic. A playful variation on surf-and-turf included a shrimp and crab custard too soupy in consistency and blasted with tarragon; the steak, a generously sized New York strip, got lost amid a busy orchestration of quartered tomatoes, pimento cheese, crisp-fried prosciutto and arugula. Fish Français suffered from an overly brothy sherried herbed butter sauce, with wilted spinach and fried twists of soppressata that overwhelmed the swai, a mild-tasting Asian white fish. Sweet-potato falafel, dry and bland, needed more tzatziki. And a platter of classic Italian treats — breaded fried chicken cutlet and eggplant Parmesan served with a meatball over bucatini in a heavy tomato sauce — seemed aimed at aficionados of diner-style red sauce.

Some entrees bowl you over through mass alone. Buttermilk fried chicken, half a bird served on a large tray with baked beans, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese and corn, seemed sized for family sharing. A bowl of linguine smothered basil-and-sundried-tomato-inflected chicken sausage in roasted onions and bell peppers with an over-the-top creamy, cheesy red-pepper Alfredo sauce. A towering Cubano burger took a thick hamburger and piled it high with pulled pork, ham and cheese — a dripping colossus of a meal. I haven’t taken this much food home in a long time.

View the original article here

Restaurant App - Dining Out Made Easy!

View the original article here