The appetizer is traditionally a thing you eat before the headliner. You know, salad, foie gras, fried calamari, frog legs in aloe vera. But sometimes appetizers can be meals instead of just tongue-whetters or fodder for the grazing trough. This is what Café Modern's smoked mozzarella-stuffed risotto cake is. It's a bronzed baseball--with the bronzing provided by panko bread crumbs--resting in a bath of "light tomato sauce." This alone makes it a museum piece. But when you add that it tastes good, it makes it double-plus fine. It's layered with overlapping wilted leaves of baby spinach. That bath is smooth and brisk, crackling with delicate acids. The ball crunches when pierced, exposing a steaming network of risotto grains--not creamy but breadlike in consistency. Plumb further and you unleash a core of molten smoked mozzarella that flows like slag through the risotto webbing, turning the whole thing into creamy, messy goo that steams. Now you're ready to view the art at The Modern.
Readers' Pick
Snuffer's cheese fries
Various locations
So we're having lunch at Taco Diner in the West Village. One in our party--the one who is washing down his lunch with shots of Patron and bottles of Negra Modelo--says, "OK, who wants dessert?" We all shake our heads and moan. Who eats desserts these days? They're full of carbs and sugar and sin. We all want to be skinny when we die. Look good in the casket. This gentleman then likens us to female genitalia--not in a complimentary way--and proceeds to order slices of the pastel des tres leches (cake of the three milks) for the table. Not to go all metrosexual on you, but oh...mah...gawd. Moist, slightly sweet, creamy. With a cup of coffee, to die for. And he almost did, on the way home, but that's another story.