Aldea - O paladar nacional está a conquistar Nova York

Nas minhas leituras cibernéticas, encontrei no New York Times esta apreciação a um novo restaurante de comida portuguesa em Nova York e pertença de um grande chefe português. Pela crítica que fez o especialista do famoso jornal americano, Frank Bruni, quando for a Nova York, vale a pena ir conhecer o "Aldea".


The chef George Mendes, who previously cooked at Tocqueville, Wallsé and Bouley, has opened Aldea, a Portuguese restaurant near Union Square. Its name is a Portuguese word for village.


Most chefs and restaurants seem to favor one school of thinking and eating over another. But Mr. Mendes, left, and Aldea "are unusually ambidextrous, as comfortable whipping up ethereal foams as scattering hunks of pork anywhere they can be defensibly scattered," writes Frank Bruni, The Times's chief restaurant critic.


"The cooking is precious, lusty, ultramodern, rustic and a host of other adjectives that don't normally squeeze together but find themselves in a tight, mostly happy clutch here," Mr. Bruni writes. At left, citrus foam and ginger over littleneck clams, an appetizer.


The two-story space is narrow, with an open kitchen in the back and slender birches recessed into the walls.


A starter of egg, bacon, peas and summer truffle, combined "into a sort of porridge of the gods," Mr. Bruni writes.


The goat entree, with crisp flaps of goat skin and tender squiggles of goat liver.


An entree of rice with duck cracklings and black olives.


A "strawberry tasting," with, from left, a sorbet, semifreddo and a hefty wedge of shortcake


Whether you're hungry for something delicate or blunt, the menu "establishes Aldea as a restaurant worth trying, and Mr. Mendes as a chef worth keeping an eye on," Mr Bruni writes.


Matéria retirada do The New York Times
Photos: Elizabeth Lippman for The New York Times