Skip to main content

Finding a Michelin-Starred Meal in Bushwick: The Blanca Story

If you haven’t heard of Blanca by now, it’s time to lift up that rock you call home and smell what Brooklyn’s been cooking. Opened by the owners of its big sister restaurant Roberta’s, a seat at Blanca has become one of the most coveted in NYC. Awarded its Michelin star a mere six months after opening and named one of America’s Best New Restaurants of 2012 by Bon Appétit, it’s no wonder this little Bushwick kitchen has a monumental reputation.

Walk through Roberta’s, out into the tiki bar and garden and you will find her. Twelve high stools wrap around the counter that looks into Blanca’s open kitchen where chef Carlo Mirarchi and his team are preparing 26 innovative and delicious courses. My dining comrade and I settled in, three bottles of wine and a bottle of Harvest Spirits Hudson Valley Grappa in tow (the restaurant was having some liquor license issues, so we happily BYOBed) as the easygoing staff put records on the turntable. What followed was three hours of superior dining.

The meal started with a few savory, one-bite delicacies like caviar, sea urchin, veal sweetbreads and an incredible fish crudo plate. Homemade tofu with purple cauliflower and tuna flake was a favorite, followed by some of the best, most perfectly al dente pastas we’d ever had – fusilli with geoduck and shitake mushrooms, pine nut ravioli with truffles and the delightfully spicy Calabrian sausage ravioli. Each dish was beautifully presented, allowing the eye to explore each ingredient we were smelling and tasting. Palette cleansers like ginger gelato with celeriac jelly were as tasty as they were refreshing in between incredibly flavorful meat dishes like lamb with mint jelly and peanut and beef with persimmon and puntarelle. We opened our grappa to finish the meal with desserts like sake pound cake with treviso gelato and whimsical hempseed marshmallows.

To say the meal was incredible is an understatement. One month of waiting and $180 per person later, we would go back every season to taste the inventive and mouthwatering dishes Chef Mirarchi has up his sleeve. The fastest way to the heart is through the stomach, and Blanca is just one more reason for Brooklynites to love their borough.

To learn more and make a reservation, visit blancanyc.com.

Amanda Gabriele
Amanda Gabriele is a food and travel writer at The Manual and the former senior editor at Supercall. She can’t live without…
Forget wine — Beer and cheese is an unbeatable combination
Put the corkscrew away and crack open a cold one
Beer and cheese

When one hears the term cheese pairings, wine is the beverage that most often comes to mind, we'd wager. Because, of course, it is. The pairing of wine and cheese is as classic a coupling as peanut butter and jelly, bacon and eggs, or chocolate and strawberries. They're meant to be together. But that certainly doesn't mean that wine is the only adult beverage that can dance an alluring tango alongside everyone's favorite dairy product. Beer, as humble as its reputation can be, is also a beautiful balance to cheese's immense offering of flavors. While some may think of beer as not being as multi-dimensional and varied in its palate-pleasing capabilities as wine, this is not the case - especially now that we live in a world with so many exquisite craft beers, stouts, and lagers.
Of course, another classic accompaniment to cheese is bread or crackers. Why might that be, one might ask. Is it because we're simply in need of a starchy vessel to usher the cheese into our mouths? The answer is actually a bit deeper than that. Starches like bread and crackers are made from the same yeasty ingredients as beer, so their pairing makes perfect culinary sense.
This isn't to say, though, that one can simply pick up a hunk of cheddar and crack open a Budweiser and expect culinary artistry. The science is a bit more nuanced than that, so we're here to help you find the best pairings for your favorite beers and cheeses.

How to pair beer and cheese

Read more
Mijenta has a new cristalino tequila — here’s why bourbon fans will love it
Mijenta has a cristalino tequila perfect for bourbon drinkers
Mijenta Cristalino

If you’re new to tequila, you might not know all the terms. Even if you’re just a beginner, you probably know all about blanco, reposado, añejo, and maybe even joven. But chances are, you’re not familiar with Cristalino tequila. This reasonably contemporary style is simply añejo tequila that’s been charcoal filtered to remove its natural caramel color and various impurities.

The style is more than just a little popular. It’s actually the fastest growing style of tequila according to Nielsen data. The newest brand to get in on the Cristalino trend is Mijenta.

Read more
You may not dislike IPAs as much as you think — you’ve just tried the wrong type
There's much more to the IPA than bitter hop bombs
Beer

The IPA has been described as the cilantro of the beer world. It’s assumed by some novice drinkers that you either love it or hate it. On one hand, it’s one of the most popular beer styles in the American craft world. It’s loved by many drinkers for its liberal use of hops and fresh, crushable flavor profile.

But haters of the style dislike it because they have an assumption that all IPA beers are aggressively hopped and uncomfortably bitter. While there are IPAs that fit that criterion (and fans of that style can’t get enough of them), there are also a handful of other types of IPAs to fit any palate.
The IPA stigma

Read more