Eat the Big Apple

Top New York chef April Bloomfeld picks her favourite Manhattan restaurants and food markets

Iwake every morning at 7am to a view of the Empire State Building,’ April Bloomfeld says, ‘which i s a nice way to st ar t t he day.’ Understatement, it quickly transpires, is a habit of Bloomfield’s. One of New York’s most-loved cooks, crowned Best Chef in the Five Boroughs at the 2014 James Beard Awards (the Oscars of America’s food world), Bloomfield has just explained that ‘a bit of a snowstorm’ – the one that caused the second-biggest snowfall in Central Park since 1869 – has kept her indoors on the morning we speak. In her ‘tiny, tiny’ apartment in Murray Hill, midtown Manhattan, her routine has been otherwise unchanged. She toasts the view with PG Tips then selects a book or three from the pile by her bed. On today’s reading list were the Italian cookery writer Marcella Hazan and a guide to building an open fre, both pored over back under the duvet. Two teas and a shower later, Bloomfeld sets out, on days not involving a blizzard, to visit the construction site that will become her sixth restaurant in the US, due to open three days after this article appears. Not a bad tally for a Birmingham girl who decided to be a chef on a whim.

Bloomf ield’s move f rom t he Midla nds to Manhattan, via Hammersmith, has been the subject of many column inches on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as recent celebration in the book

Women Chefs of New York. At 16 she missed the application deadline for the police, so she followed her two sisters to Birmingham College of Food, Tourism and Creative Studies. Then came jobs in London, at Kensing ton Place under Rowley Leigh and at Bibendum under Simon Hopkinson.

In 2003, when she was 28 and working as a sous chef at the River Cafe in west London, her name was dropped by Jamie Oliver to two American restaurateurs on the hunt for a super-chef. Having got the thumbs up from Ken Friedman (ex-manager of UB40 and the Smiths, and buddy of Bono) and chef Mario Batali (of Babbo, Del Posto, Esca…), Bloomfeld opened the Spotted Pig the following year, serving Quicke’s-cheddar salads, devilled eggs and crispy pig’s ears to those lucky enough to get a table.

‘At the Breslin,’ Bloomfeld says of another of her establishments, ‘we have Scotch eggs, pork rind, beef and Stilton pie – you can’t get any more British than that.’ Most mornings she strolls through the NoMad neighbourhood to her second gastropub – which, like the Spotted Pig, holds a Michelin star –

‘I serve Scotch eggs, pork rind, beef and Stilton pie,’ Bloomfeld says. ‘You can’t get any more

British than that’

to check in and don whites ‘if I’m needed’. On her days of, she would make a convincing guide on a walking tour. She tips the charm of the South Street Seaport, home to the old fsh market (‘It’s open and spacious – there’s something special about that area’), explaining the thrill of covering Manhattan, ‘from one side to the other, in 45 minutes. You can take in the architecture, fnd a new shop on the same street every week. It’s always evolving.’

If you book on to the Bloomfeld à pied tour, you had better bring comfortable shoes. ‘I don’t tend to linger anywhere for too long,’ she says, ‘but I like to pop into Birch Cofee, close to the Breslin.’ Scorching latte in hand, the next stop might be Sunrise Mart on Stuyvesant Street ‘for beautiful Japanese fish, noodles, pickles, soy sauce and mirin’, or Kalustyan’s on Lexing ton Avenue ‘for products from almost every cuisine – it’s really amazing. Fresh turmeric, Thai chillies, whole spices, dried fruit, so many nuts.’ Dropping in at lunchtime? ‘Not a lot of people know this, but you can head to the little shop upstairs and grab an Indian lentil sandwich.’

When Bloomfeld isn’t replenishing her stocks of sake and tofu at Mitsuwa Marketplace, a bus ride away in New Jersey, she scours Union Square Greenmarket closer to home for fruit and veg. ‘I like to do one quick run through, then go back and pick up the things that caught my eye,’ she says.

Most recently, ‘the most perfect Romanesco broccoli’ was her prized purchase, winning itself a portrait on her Instagram account to the joy of her 110,000 followers. ‘I cooked it with anchovies, rosemary and crème fraîche,’ she recalls. This simple dish is typical of the food Bloomfeld cooks at home. Asian condiments fll her cupboards, while the fridge holds ‘cheese, salumi, bacon, eggs, yogurt, veggies and salad’. What? No boar’s heads or cow carcasses in the fridge of a chef lauded for her nose-to-tail cooking? She laughs. ‘It’s hard to keep all those things if you’re not at home very much. When I do cook here it’s a one-pot wonder, a whole roast chicken that I’ll eat throughout the week, in a salad, stock, soup or pasta.’

I gasp when the author of the bestselling cookbook A Girl and Her Pig admits to being a fan of green juices, and that on a recent visit to Los Angeles, ‘lots of turmeric tonic was dr unk’. Bloomfeld’s carnivorous fans will be relieved to hear that her sixth restaurant is called Salvation Burger (serving burgers, fsh sandwiches and hot dogs), and that she is planning a trip to Austria ‘to do pig slaughter and make salumi’. The salads are a necessity when so much tasting is involved at work. ‘I go boxing twice a week,’ she says, but her instructor is such a foodie that by the time they have fnished a session, having babbled constantly about sausages or barbecues, ‘I’m famished!’

Bloomfeld adores talking about restaurants and is generous with her recommendations. ‘I love to send people to Estela on East Houston Street. It’s very cool, and Ignacio Mattos’s crispy black rice with seafood is great.’ Get to Old Town Bar on East 18th Street early, she suggests, ‘to grab a booth,

‘Add even more layers of favour and the salad goes from just another nice dish on your table to a meal’s main event’

for a beer and a burger’. Other favourites include Maialino on Lexington Avenue, where Bloomfeld tucks into pasta with a glass of wine, and ‘Kunjip in Koreatown, where you can cook your own Korean barbecue and have bulgogi (grilled marinated beef ) with vermicelli’. Across the East River, in Brooklyn, she rates the 18-seat Semilla for its vegetable-focused menu, which appeals to her tastes since writing last year’s A Girl and Her Greens.

‘New York is exciting, inspiring,’ she says, but England is still very much on her radar. ‘I’d like to stamp my foot back there again.’ In the meantime, she admits, ‘I’m hungry, so I’m going to get my thermals on, throw on a big jacket and venture out to see what kind of food I can fnd. I’m feeling a nice, chunky chicken soup coming on.’