NYC Restaurant Week lunch is a far better deal than dinner

Skate Wing with Chickpea Puree, Roasted Vegetables and Arugula at Fulton, a Manhattan restaurant owned by Citarella.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Fulton -- named after the famous fish market of the same name -- is a restaurant from Citarella, known for upscale markets selling pristine seafood, meat and produce.

The Upper East Side restaurant also is one of hundreds offering three-course lunches for $25 and three-course dinners for $38 during the city's semi-annual Restaurant Week, which ends Aug. 15.

Lunch is a far better value, as I discovered at dinner on Wednesday at Fulton, where the two fixed-price menus are virtually identical.

I enjoyed my meal: An appetizer of the tenderest octopus I have ever had, a generous portion of skate wing with roasted vegetables and two kinds of sorbet to finish.

The restaurant is just around the corner from a Citarella market on Third Avenue.

An appetizer of Grilled Octopus with Potato, Chermoula and Cured Lemon. The waiter said the octopus is tenderized for three hours in boiling water, and it showed. 

Moroccan marinade, stacked skate 

The octopus was marinated in chermoula, a Moroccan seafood sauce made with cilantro, parsley, garlic and other ingredients. 

Two pieces of local skate wing were stacked with chickpea puree and roasted vegetables.

Skate is normally tender, which this one was, but some of it was annoyingly chewy and stringy.

I left a 15% tip, and took advantage of an American Express promotion during Restaurant Week by registering my card and using it to pay for the meal, giving me a statement credit of $5.

That brought the cost of dinner down to $33, plus tip and tax. As I was leaving, the hostess handed me two cookies.

Still, I plan to stick with lunch during the rest of Summer Restaurant Week.

Mango and raspberry sorbet with fresh mint leaves. Fulton's Restaurant Week dinner menu offers tiramisu, but I asked the waiter for something lighter and to tell the kitchen not to cook my food with butter. 

Bread service: Crusty rolls and extra-virgin olive oil.

You can't tell from the dining room, but Fulton was busy on Wednesday evening, with most customers sitting at outside tables, enjoying $1 oysters and $6 glasses of prosecco during Happy Hour, below.

Happy Hour menu.

Fulton Restaurant, 205 E. 75th St., New York, N.Y.; 1-212-288-6600. 

Web site: Citarella's seafood restaurant

A lunch in the city lifts our spritis

Image via Wikipedia

West 42nd Street in Manhattan is kinder and gentler than it was in the 1960s.

For our second Restaurant Week meal in Manhattan, my wife and I went to the year-old Ca Va Brasserie on West 44th Street, in the Theater District.


We enjoyed our three-course, $24.07 lunch at this year-old Todd English restaurant, which is in the InterContinental Hotel, across from Birdland, a jazz club.


Our first course on Friday was a wonderfully rich lobster bisque, with a delicious miniature lobster-salad sandwich on the side. 


The bread service was a small baguette in a bag, accompanied by a ramekin of butter.


My wife noted the bisque didn't have any lobster pieces, but thought it was the best she has had. Her opinion of the barbecue sauce with her entree of roasted, dark-meat chicken on the bone wasn't as high.


Her juicy chicken came with a cold salad of greens and sliced potatoes.


Grilled octopus was listed as another entree choice, but when I ordered it, I was told the kitchen was serving something else instead. The waiter, Eduardo, who is  from Brazil, read from a note, "P-R-A-W-N."


The prawn was at least 4 inches long, including the tail and head, and it rested on a generous bed of tasty, small white beans with zucchini pieces and micro herbs. I demolished it, leaving only the beady eyes.


I recalled the emaciated, bony, whole John Dory fish I ordered at our first $24.07 lunch at Esca a few days earlier. The next day, during my annual physical, my doctor put it succinctly, calling Esca "overrated and overpriced."


For dessert at Ca Va (pronounced SAH VAH), my wife chose a small cheesecake topped with a fresh blueberry compote, and I enjoyed sweet mango and pineapple sorbets.


The dining room is all glass, metal and polished stone, with a bar along one wall, a smaller dining space behind large, sliding, glass-and-metal doors, and a separate cafe and market. 


We had a reservation, but the place was only one-third full. Service was excellent, and I gave Eduardo an 18% tip.


After our lunch, we strolled to Times Square, purchased two coffees at a Starbucks on Broadway and sat on chairs under an umbrella in the middle of the street, now  part of a pedestrian mall in the heart of the city.


Later, we looked over the new TKTS office, where half-price tickets to Broadway shows are available on the day of the performance. Credit cards are accepted now, in contrast to the old, cash-only days.


We returned to the bus terminal along 42nd Street, and I reminisced about my summers as a teen-ager working at D.C. Record City, which specialized in oldies from the Fifties (rock-and-roll 45s) and jazz LPs.


We had a wonderful afternoon in a great city. I even remembered to ask for the senior round-trip fare when we board the Manhattan-bound bus in Hackensack ($3.80 v. $8.50).


Ca Va Brasserie, 310 W. 44th St., Manhattan; 212-803-4545.


Web site: Ca Va Todd English