AfterTaste (by Sherry)

Blue Smoke and Jazz Standard

116 East 27th Street (Bet. Lexington and Park Avenues) - (212)  447-7733

Okay, granted I’ve never been to the Jazz Standard located underneath Blue Smoke, but that was the catchiest title I could think of.

I figured Blue Smoke needs another review like I need a hole in the head, but what the hell? Since when did oversaturation ever stop me? How useful is a review from five, six years ago anyway?

Four of my friends and I went to Blue Smoke Sunday night for my friend’s birthday. Blue Smoke is a great place to celebrate a birthday: festive, good food, loud but not deafening, and a big, pleasantly hip space.

To start, we shared the deviled eggs, the warm barbeque potato chips with bacon blue cheese dip, and the peel and eat shrimp.

The deviled eggs were creamy and flavorful with mild hints of garlic and paprika. The fluffy, whipped yolks were piped high on top of the white. The four egg halves are served with a peppery watercress salad garnished with almonds and lightly dressed in a mild vinaigrette (I believe it was champagne vinaigrette due to its light color and mild, but still complex flavor). Sorry there are no pictures, those pig friends of mine devoured them before I got the chance to take any (actually, I was too busy being a pig to remember to photograph them before it was too late…forgive me! I’m still learning how to be a proper food blogger).

The peel and eat shrimp, boiled in Old Bay seasoning and beer, were spicy and fresh as usual. They’re served with a cocktail sauce and a wedge of lemon; a nice, light dish in anticipation of the pounds of meat to come. The best way to eat them, in my opinion, is to suck on the outer shell beforing peeling them and dipping them in the sauce. This way you get to taste that gorgeous spicy broth they’ve been cooked in.

Peel n’ Eat Shrimp

The potato chips were better than I remember. Irregularly shaped so you know they’re homemade, they had more BBQ seasoning on them than the last time I had them (a couple of years ago) and the blue cheese dip was salty, mild, and creamy with only the vaguest suggestion of blue cheese (tastes closer to Ranch dressing than blue cheese), so even if you have anti-blue-cheese-ites in your party, go ahead and order it anyway. So you’ve got the sweet, powdery BBQ contrasted with the ooey, gooey blue cheese. In the words of my uncle (just kidding), I mean, nemesis, Rachael Ray: YUM-O.

On to the main event(s): the rib sampler, the fried chicken platter, and the seared salmon.

The rib sampler consisted of St. Louis spare ribs, Kansas City spare ribs, Texas salt and pepper, and (for a few extra dollars, because it’s normally not part of the sampler) the Memphis baby backs. As you can tell below, presentation is not a big concern at Blue Smoke.

Fuzzy Wuzzy Picture of the Sampler (Top Left: Texas Salt and Pepper Ribs, Top Center: Memphis Baby Backs, Bottom Center: St. Louis Spare Ribs, Hidden Underneath: Kansas City Spare Ribs) 

Now whenever my sister and I visited Blue Smoke in the past we always got the Memphis baby backs. “The others are too fatty!” my sister would complain. I didn’t mind. I liked the baby backs, but somewhere in the back of my food-addled brain I always wondered, “Am I missing out on the porky, fatty goodness of the spare ribs? Am I just wasting time and money on these puny girly-man ribs?”

Last night, my questions were answered: no.

The spare ribs (both the Kansas City and the St. Louis) were larger and seemingly meatier, but they were also so fatty that I probably got the same amount of real meat off of them as I would with a baby back rib. As I tear into meat on bone, I don’t want to have to worry about the delicate placement of my teeth in order to avoid sucking down marble sized gobs of fat. I want to tear with abandonment! So while many probably prefer the fattier, larger spare ribs, I will stick to my girly-man baby backs.

Kansas City Spare Rib (the Sauciest of the Bunch…Ooh La La)

Another favorite was the Texas salt and pepper beef ribs. I have no idea if this is actually how Texans prepare their ribs, but if they do…HOT DAMN! DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS! The ribs were lean, beefy, and very, very peppery. They almost tasted like (and this may sound bad but it’s not supposed to) really delicious jerky. I say jerky because of the intense pepper flavor and because parts of them were so perfectly charred (and therefore a little chewy), those charred bits being the stuff of dreams.

The real gut buster was the macaroni and cheese, legendary in New York City and, for me, hands down the best macaroni and cheese in the entire city. “It’s al dente!” Pri exclaimed happily after she took her first bite. Yes, indeed the elbow macaroni has the appropriate amount of chewiness to stand up to the gooiest, creamiest, smoothest cheese sauce since the invention of Velveeta. I will never be able to figure out if they actually use the big, bad V in their sauce, but I don’t understand how they manage to melt that cheese so damn well without it. And yet they must, because the flavor is definitely there in that sauce and it doesn’t taste like a product of Kraft. My god, one bite of it and you’ll be content to roll up into a fat little ball and die a happy, fulfilled piglet. I had slightly more than one bite Sunday night. In fact we all did, spurring us to demand a third order of it. Sweet Moses, I can almost taste it now…

Look at that Glorious Stuff…Food of the Gods

The fried chicken wasn’t as crunchy as it normally is (usually with really crunchy bits  of breading) and it seemed to have been fried longer and darker than it usually is too. It was still delicious (what fried meat isn’t, really), but a tad disappointing. The mashed potatoes were bland, but they’ve always been bland, so no surprise there.

Dark, Dark Brown and Delicious, Not Quite Golden

The salmon had a little Tex-Mex flare to it that my non-meat-eating friend, Patti, enjoyed. The salmon sat atop a mound of rice flecked with peppers and cilantro. The salmon itself was tender, cooked to our requests, and slightly sweet with a tangy pico de gallo on top.

Salmon over Rice and a Bean-Based Sauce

For dessert we shared three (it was a very family style dinner): the chocolate cake, the pumpkin cheesecake, and the brownie sundae.

The chocolate cake was the center of attention at our table. Not only because it was the dessert the waitstaff decided to decorate in honor of Pri’s bday, but also because of the adorable miniature glass of ice cold milk served alongside it. The cake itself was super moist and chocolate-y without being cloyingly sweet.

The pumpkin cheesecake, a seasonal addition I believe,  was very pumpkin-y indeed, although I didn’t really sense any cheesecake-ness. It tasted like a very fluffy, almost whipped pumpkin pie filling in a graham cracker crust with candied pecans on top. It was a bit sweeter than desserts I normally like, but it was a big hit with the other girls.

The brownie sundae was delectably classic as well. Soft, chewy, fudgie brownie topped with vanilla ice cream and fresh whipped cream. Nothing special, but very comforting.

Alright, I need to wrap up this novella. Normally, I provide an itemized bill, but since we split the bill a million ways between a million credit cards, I didn’t get  to keep the itemized check. I’ll just say that with all those dishes, plus tax and (a generous) tip and a whole lot of drinks, the total came out to $300.