Carl Allen’s jazz bonafides are indisputable—as a young drummer out of William Paterson University he earned a spot in Freddie Hubbard’s band, and would go on to play with the saxophonists George Coleman and Phil Woods (among others), and serve as the Artistic Director of Jazz Studies at the Juilliard School. The quintet he brings to SummerStage — featuring Jeremy Pelt, JD Allen, Eric Reed, and Peter Washington — pays tribute to one of his heroes, the legendary drummer Art Blakey.
Allen is joined by NEA Jazz Master and one of the most respected musicians out of the hard-bop era George Coleman and his trio, the multiple Grammy Award nominee pianist Fred Hersch, who has been proclaimed as “the most arrestingly innovative pianist in jazz” by Vanity Fair, and the saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin, who has played with the likes of Missy Elliot, Alicia Keys, Stevie Wonder, Macy Gray, the Roots and Anita Baker.
Southern Indian fare like idli lentil nuggets, fried kingfish, chickpea puffs, and dosas with various fillings share the menu in this 60-seat spot with a few cross-cultural creations like an Indian chile dog and idli poutine. The chef and an owner, Sruthi Chowdary, has entered into a partnership with Godavari, a national chain of more than two dozen Southern Indian restaurants.
The shows vary from sophisticated outré cabaret by the Downtown legend Joey Arias, to jazz vets like Joe Giglio and Keith Loftis, all the way to unexpected turns by tapper Felipe Galganni, and indie improvisers Plaster Cramp, and a number of new and newish groups like the David Stern Quartet, The Theory Conspiracy and Marty Isenberg’s The Wes Anderson Project.
Lately I have fallen under the spell of an East Village restaurant called Foxface. The cooking there is hard to pin down, geographically. Stopping in a few weeks ago, I ate Low Countryish wild red shrimp on grits, with sweet corn off the cob and a potent saffron-lobster sauce. More recently, I had skinless pork sausage inspired by sai ua, the spicy and tangy specialty identified with the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. The soft tripe I enjoyed the other weekend had been simmered with ’nduja, the fiery and malleable Calabrian sausage, and then covered with a few thin shingles of shaved pecorino.
Like the fox in the logo, Ms. Lahat has coppery hair and wears cat’s-eye glasses. She prepares the orders in the room behind the window, which measures 48 square feet. Inside the building, under the stairs, Foxface has a second room. Mr. Kushnir thinks it could be as large as 14 square feet.
A variety of equipment is stowed in the two rooms, including three induction burners, a roaster, a smoker and a dishwasher. After business hours, some of it comes out as Mr. Kushnir supervises the more time-consuming roasts and stews. He describes the food that he and Ms. Lahat cook as “dishes we like to eat, reimagined as sandwiches.”
"I would not say we are trying to replicate the original space into the new one at all. Our goal is to honor the original while letting the new space dictate to us what it should be. Our goal is to recreate the community and cultural atmosphere, which is much more to important to us than architecture. We will be honoring the old space but this is much more of a reincarnation than replication."
Photos and interview by Stacie Joy There’s an early summer thunderstorm brewing as I make my way over to Zadie’s Oyster Room , 413 E. 12...
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