Ever since I was a little girl, I knew I wanted to eat potpie. Like its dessert counterpart, the potpie is everything I want in a dish: a rich amalgam of textures, always filling and eternally comforting. I grew up eating Marie Callender’s mini potpies from the frozen food aisle (Marie, you’ll always be famous, girl) and post-Thanksgiving potpies made with all that leftover turkey and store-bought pie crust.
It was only in adulthood (and in New York) that I realized the incredible heights a potpie could reach — I’m talking veritable clouds of puff pastry over piping hot stewed chicken and vegetables like the kind you’ll find at the Waverly Inn or Kellogg’s Diner — as well as the magic New York City restaurants could work with potpies of the non-chicken variety. Here are three options that have recently melted my cold, wintry heart.
Beef pie at Lingo
We need to talk about Greenpoint. More specifically, we need to talk about that strip of Greenpoint Avenue between West Street and Transmitter Park that is teeming with restaurants: Taku Sando, El Pingüino, Radio Star, Panzón and, of course, Lingo, which opened almost two years ago. So often I’m meeting restaurants early in their lifetime, so it was nice to walk into a restaurant — this one from the chef Emily Yuen, an alum of the Japanese restaurant Bessou — that knows exactly what it’s about.
Personally, I was about the beef pie, a stunning potpie served in an oval-shaped dish with a hunk of bone as a vent. “Beef pie” as a description really undersells what makes this menu item so special because underneath that thin but crispy sheet of crust is a tantalizing beef curry with root vegetables in the style of Hokkaido, Japan, where it’s prepared more like a thin stew and enriched with a buttery roux. When we dropped by for dinner on a snowy Sunday night, my friend Joey and I chipped every piece of crust off the edge of the platter long after the curry had disappeared.
Fisherman’s pie at King
I imagine many readers can’t wrap their minds around the sometimes fraught combination of dairy and seafood, even if they’re known to put away a bowl of clam chowder every now and then.
But the British and the Irish have been combining fish and dairy for a while in the form of fisherman’s pie, the blustery seaside town’s answer to the more inland shepherd’s pie. Whenever I want to try a high-end version of a British staple, I always turn to King in SoHo. Its founding chefs Jess Shadbolt and Clare de Boer met while working at the River Cafe in London, so of course they’d know how to take a fisherman’s pie to another level. That level costs $68 and features a mixture of wild hake and cod in a tangy crème fraîche-enriched sauce under the most airy puff pastry; leeks and celery hearts add verve. The dish is advertised “to share” but I could have easily put one of them away by myself and still had room for more. (For what it’s worth, King will serve lunch on Fridays starting tomorrow, Feb. 14. Hard to think of a better locale for a romantic lunch date.)
Turkey potpie at the Dead Rabbit
Some might say turkey potpie isn’t that far off from chicken potpie. But some would be wrong because turkey at its best beats chicken every time. That’s a hill I’ll gladly die on, hopefully with a drumstick in my hand. That’s why I was immediately enamored when I came across the turkey potpie at the Dead Rabbit, the award-winning cocktail bar in the deepest depths of the financial district. (We’re talking Bowling Green, view of the Statue of Liberty, Staten Island Ferry deep.)
Sure the cocktails are very, very good, but the pleasures of a perfectly crafted drink don’t measure up to the even greater pleasures of a slim potpie presented outside the pot with a mound of potatoes that I’m pretty sure are squeezed through a frosting bag. The pie itself is served just this side of dry — this is how they manage to pop it out of the pan without incident — but that’s what the ceramic cup of thick, goopy gravy is for. Don’t be shy, pour it with aplomb and let the comfort wash right over you.
One Reader Question
We love staying in the Upper West Side area when visiting New York City, always do a dinner at Café Luxembourg, any other suggestions? — Claudia A.
A few months ago I had brunch at Abigail’s, a relatively new (relative to, like, Zabar’s) Californian restaurant at the corner of West 102nd Street and Broadway. The space is cute and the menu is modern but approachable: So Cal breakfast burrito, “pancakes with too many blueberries,” grain bowls. The corn fritters with raspberry butter were also a surprise hit. I can’t attest to the quality of dinner, but if it’s anything like brunch you’re in for a nice, laid-back meal. Bonus: They just announced a new BYOB policy (Sunday through Wednesday only) with a $5 corkage fee, so feel free to bring along your preferred California cabernet.
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